So an Archer and a Hunter Walk Into a Bar
by Sheyrena Wyrsabane
Summary: It's the beginning of a bad joke or a friendship that could turn into something more. Clint and Dean's paths cross when they're unknowingly tracking down the same person, and they keep in contact and keep each other sane after the op. They joke and they fight and eventually they save the world together.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings** (for the whole story, chapters will be labeled with warnings appropriate for that chapter except language because that's going to be a constant): Strong language, non-explicit torture of a not main character, references to sexual activity, mentioned torture of a main character, deaths of side characters, death of main character (in accordance with canon).  
**Spoilers:** To be safe, Supernatural Seasons 1-4. I mess around with Season 4, but there are definitely spoilers for important parts of it.

* * *

Dean rubs the back of his head with his hand and looks down at his glass of Coke. Sadly, it has no rum in it. Dean likes a good buzz, and while he'd like a drink before going to what might be his death, he knows better than to hunt a werewolf with alcohol in his system. He needs all hands on deck for this.

He's probably more pumped than he should be about tracking this werewolf. Werewolves aren't quite as exciting as the movies, but chasing it will give him a good adrenaline rush. He hasn't had one of those in a while. He understands the necessity of tracking down and destroying ghosts, because they can do some pretty nasty damage, but research is boring and salting and burning bones is so mundane. Plus, his back always hurts the morning after digging up a corpse.

"Rough night?"

Dean looks up to see a guy slide into the chair next to him. He's in a tight black sleeveless top that clings to his body, outlining the ridges of his ab muscles and the hard planes of his pecs. There's a knowing smile on the guy's face, and when he leans his arms on the bar, Dean can't help but notice that the guy is ripped. Instant man crush. Bicep envy, the whole nine yards. Dean's man enough to admit it.

Dean chuckles and picks up his glass. "Oh, it hasn't even gotten started. I'm Dean by the way." Dean doesn't usually act this forward with men in bars, but he's bored, the guy's attractive, and if he looks past the guy's shoulder he can keep an eye on his mark without making it obvious that he's staring at her. So really, he's doing this for the sake of the job.

The guy reaches out his hand. "Clint. So what do you have in store that's gotten you all down?"

Oh, nothing much, Dean thinks, just hunting down a werewolf that's been leaving a trail of heartless corpses all over Northwestern Pennsylvania. He's excited for the hunt, not so excited about the waiting part. He sneaks a peek at Miss Werewolf and sees her working her way through her third martini. He wonders how many it'll take for her to finally leave the bar. He has enough self-preservation not to gank her in the bar, but it's tempting. It's really tempting.

Night hunts are the worst, because by the time he's done and showered all the blood and gore off and patched up whatever wounds he's gotten, it's usually too late to find an open bar which means no women. There are two things Dean likes after a good a hunt. A cold beer and a good fuck. He thinks tonight he'll have to settle for just the beer.

Dean picks up his glass and swirls the contents around. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"You'd be surprised," Clint says. "What I want to know is why an attractive young guy is sitting alone at a bar, drinking a plain soda. You could have any girl is this bar."

Dean's curious as to how Clint knows Dean doesn't have any rum in his Coke, but he decides to preen under the compliment instead of questioning the man. "Tell me something I don't know."

Clint leans in and puts a hand on Dean's leg. His fingers spread across the denim, his thumb grazing the inside seam. "You could have any guy too."

Dean's not used to men being so forward with him, especially in this part of the country, and he's starting to wish he didn't have a job to do tonight.

Dean slouches just enough to slide Clint's hand forward and cocks a challenging eyebrow. "I thought I said for you to tell me something I don't know.

Clint laughs and pulls his hand back. "That girl over there is checking you out." He nods toward the blond werewolf. "And she looks like trouble."

"Oh, she is," Dean says. "We're going to have a little tussle tonight."

"Oh?" Clint asks.

Dean flashes a smile that isn't supposed to be comforting. "I'm going to take her for a hell of a ride." He tosses a five dollar bill on the table. "Maybe I'll see you here tomorrow night."

"I'm not one for sloppy seconds," Clint says.

Dean laughs. "I promise you, it wouldn't be sloppy."

He winks before going to find Anya. She's leaning against the bar, a drink casually in one hand as she surveys the room. Her hips are jutted out, her legs slightly spread, an invitation that no one in the bar is taking her up on. They can probably sense that there's something not quite right. Dean's the only one crazy enough to go up to her. It gives him a little swagger to his step, and he gives her his most charming smile.

"You got big plans for the night?" he asks. Besides hunting down people and eating their hearts? He brightens his smile.

She raises an interested eyebrow. "I might."

"Might?"

She grins and pulls Dean flush against her. "All depends on how big you are."

Oh, wow, Dean thinks as she leans down to kiss him. Too bad she's a werewolf. He weaves a hand through her hair and kisses her back, focusing on the smooth slide of her lips and the hard press of her mouth instead of what she is.

He slips a hand into her back pocket as he pulls back. "Want to take this somewhere more private?"

She grins. "You have no idea."

* * *

They make it to an abandoned alley before she shoves him up against a wall. His back slams up against a building and she grinds her hips against him as she presses her mouth to his. He kisses her back, one hand fisted in her hair, the other reaching down to get his silver knife.

She's aggressive, which he likes, but he finds himself wishing that her arms were muscled, her frame more compact. Really? He's supposed to be killing a werewolf and instead he's wishing that she was some random guy he met in a bar? That's embarrassing.

"You're distracted," she says, her breath warm against his lips as she pulls back. She pauses as she spies him reaching underneath is coat.

"Whatchya looking for there?" she asks. She follows his hand into his jeans and hisses as she pulls out his knife. She tosses it aside and suddenly she looks pissed. She knocks him aside as easily as the knife and Dean hits his head on the asphalt.

Oh, damn it. Things were already not going according to plan. He rolls out of the way as she lunges at him, her fingers giving way to claws. He should've rethought this plan. Like not take her out on the night of a full moon. She picks him up and hurls him to the other side of the alley.

He can hear her feet scraping against the asphalt. She's coming for him. He reaches into his pants for his gun. He should be grateful that she didn't find it when she was feeling him up for weapons.

His hands are aching and bloodied from where they got cut up on the ground and he gets his gun up in time to see her leaping at him. He pulls the trigger and catches her in the arm which keeps her from landing on him, but it also pisses her off.

He springs to his feet and shoots her again. Thigh this time. After he gets out of this, he's going to get a stiff drink and then hit the shooting range. He can't believe he's missed twice. She's not going to give him many more opportunities.

Suddenly there's gunfire all around him, and she's twisting and jerking. Dean scans the area to see men positioned in the windows of the buildings surrounding them. What the hell? She crumples to the ground and they stop firing.

Dean cocks his gun and aims for her heart. He's going to kill the bitch this time.

"Sir, put the gun down," a disembodied voice says and suddenly there's a bright light shining on Dean, and he can't see.

He holds a hand up, but it doesn't help. "Look, I don't know what you jackasses are doing, moving in on my kill, but since you didn't actually kill her, could you let me do my job?"

"She's dead," the voice says. "Put your gun down or we will open fire on you."

Dean rolls his eyes and lays his gun down on the ground. He's not going to risk shooting her without a clear shot, because that would make sacrificing his life pointless. He can hear her stirring though, and he wonders if these idiots realize that they've just managed to royally piss off a werewolf. Doubtful. Only hunters know how to kill werewolves and they never travel in groups this large.

Dean dives to the side and barely manages to keep from getting killed. He does get a nice gash in his arm and he curses as he fumbles around for either of his weapons. The werewolf kicks the gun away so there goes that option.

He spots his knife a few feet away and he dives for it, getting his hand wrapped around the handle in time for his arm to be ripped back. Pain flares and he's pretty sure he's just dislocated his shoulder. As soon as he's done with this werewolf bitch he's going after whoever screwed with his hunt.

He gets flipped onto his back, and he raises his knife. He's not going to be fast enough. He has a second to register that thought and hope that his dad doesn't miss him too much when he hears another bullet fired. Anya jerks as a bullet embeds in her skull, and Dean takes advantage of her momentary shock to drive his knife through her chest.

Of course, that means he's now pinned to the ground by a dead werewolf, and she's bleeding all over his shirt. He'll have to steal a couple from the local Wal-Mart before he leaves town. He looks up to see the guy from the bar walking towards him, gun raised.

"What the hell?" Dean asks, shoving Anya off of him with his good arm. Yep, his shirt is definitely ruined.

The man shrugs. "Not the kind of ride you were hoping for?"

"Would've gone fine if you and your friends hadn't messed things up," Dean says getting to his feet. He's battered and his muscles are already starting to tense up. He needs to get back to the motel so he can fix his shoulder and take a nice long bath.

"We saved your ass," Clint says.

"You saved? What?" Dean laughs. "You're crazy. She would've killed all of you while you uselessly emptied your clips in her. Sorry to break it to you, but I got the kill shot. Well, not quite shot, but I did kill her."

"I shot her in the head," Clint says, folding his arms over his chest.

Mm, biceps, Dean thinks before shaking himself. He needs to focus. He's battling for his honor right now. "Did you notice how shooting her repeatedly did nothing? Silver to the heart. Only way to kill her."

Clint raises his eyebrows. "You're shitting me."

Dean shrugs and then swears as it sends pain shooting down his arm and through his shoulder. "Look, I really don't care if you believe me. I got my kill, and I'm still alive so it's a good day. Well, night. Speaking of, time for me to go before I change my mind and kill you all."

"Kill us?" Clint laughs. "You really do think you're a hot shot." He loses his smile at the flash of pain on Dean's face. "Hey, why don't I help you with that shoulder, and we can get a real drink."

"You almost got me killed," Dean points out. "Why would-"

Clint pops Dean's shoulder back into place and grins at Dean's grunt of pain. "How about it's my way of saying sorry?"

"I need to get back to my motel and change. Bartenders don't like it when I get blood all over the place."

* * *

They don't make it back to the bar. Dean takes a hot shower to make up for the fact that he doesn't get to take a bath and heads into the room with nothing but a pair of boxers on. Clint, if that's even his real name, didn't take him up on the offer of using the magic fingers while Dean was showering. His loss.

Dean plops down on his bed and opens up his med kit and Clint looks over from where he's sitting in one of the uncomfortable chairs that's pulled up to the card table that may or may not be trying to pass as a dining room table.

"This motel sucks," Clint says.

"Sorry I don't get a pretty government pension for what I do." Dean dabs as the claw marks he's sporting. Those are going to take a while to heal. He might have to lay off working for longer than he wanted to.

"I'm not government."

Dean laughs. "I'm not an idiot. You had men with guns in windows, you had a creepy narrator voice, you had a freakin' spot light. Plus, you knew my drink at the bar when no one but me and the bartender should've known. You're government. I won't hold it against you as long as you picked up something good from the beer distributor."

Clint holds up two six packs of Sam Adams.

Dean frowns but reaches out a hand. "I'll forgive you for going quality over quantity. It's been a while since I had a Sam Adams." He flicks the cap off and takes a long drink.

"So this kind of thing happen to you a lot?" Clint asks.

Dean has a snide comment on his tongue about how he's John Winchester's kid so hunters know better than to fuck with his hunts, and only entitled government douche bags think it's okay to stomp all over Dean's territory, but he bites it back. There's only so much shit he can give Clint before Clint decides to walk away, and Dean doesn't want Clint to leave. It's not beer and a babe, but beer and biceps are a very good substitute.

"Sadly, yes. It's my job." Dean doesn't know how 'don't be a douche' turned into 'tell the truth'. He eyes his beer warily. Government agents are sneaky, maybe Clint managed to slip in some truth potion or something on the way back from the store.

"Right." Clint pops open his own beer. "So, what exactly were we hunting? We thought it was a mutant, maybe an army experiment gone bad, but you obviously know what it is, because you knew how to kill it."

"A mutant?" Dean asks. He's never heard of those.

Clint grins. "You tell me your story, and I'll tell you mine."

"Werewolf," Dean says because what the hell. He takes another long drink of his beer and pauses. "Wait a second, you didn't know that Anya was a werewolf, but you definitely knew she was bad news. Why did you point her out to me?" Dean's eyes narrow with suspicion. "Were you using me as bait."

"Don't get your boxers in a bunch," Clint says. "If you'd shown any signs of being in distress, I would've whisked your damsel ass out of harm's way." Clint laughs and dodges the beer cap Dean flicks at his head. "Tell me more about werewolves. Do they eat all their victims' hearts?"

"Nasty things," Dean says. "I can't believe you've never heard of them. Don't you talk to your FBI buddies? The X-Files ringing any bells for you?"

"The X-Files aren't real. And what makes you think I'm not FBI?"

Dean waves his hand in Clint's general direction. "You're in skintight spandex. Something tells me that's not FBI standard issue. And no, Scully and Mulder aren't real, but I'm sure someone somewhere has a filing cabinet full of freaky things they can't explain."

"And you can explain them," Clint says. It's half-disbelief, half-genuine interest. Dean focuses on the latter half.

"World's full of evil, and I'm one of the souls brave enough to fight it." Deans grins. "So werewolves. You've got the basics already; full moon, rip out the hearts of their victims, can only be killed by silver."

Dean leans back against the headboard and finishes his beer. This is going to be a long night if he has to give a recap of every monster he's ever heard of.

* * *

"So family business?" Clint asks once they're into their third case of beer. Clint had run out to get more after the second case was finished. "And I thought my family was bad."

Dean shrugs, and he doesn't feel even a twinge of pain. The wonders of alcohol. Dean can't really argue that his family doesn't suck, because right now his brother is at Stanford pretending that the rest of the family doesn't exist and John is who the hell knows where.

John and Dean used to hunt together, but Dean knows that when they hunt together, they both feel the missing presence of the third of their triad. All Dean wants is for the three of them to hunt together. He doesn't understand why John won't go and apologize. If John and Sam just talked it out, the two of them could make it up and the three of them could blast evil together. They would make one hell of a team. But that's a dream, and one that won't ever come true.

"You sound like you have a story of your own there," Dean says.

Clint shrugs. "Dead parents. Grew up in the circus. Dick brother. You know."

Dean recognizes the wistful look on Clint's face. The face of someone who misses someone desperately, but also doesn't want to talk about. He knows all about that. "So the circus, huh? You must have learned a few good tricks there."

He gives Clint a once over, taking a moment to re-appreciate him. The dips of his biceps, the way his shirt clings to his shoulders and molds over his abs. If Dean's body didn't feel like he'd been hit by truck and then scraped up by glass he'd probably try and make a move. He's tempted to even with the injuries, but he doesn't want to embarrass himself. Besides, he hadn't thought he'd see the guy after the bar, maybe he'll see him again after this. Maybe passing up the opportunity right now doesn't mean passing it up forever.

Dean barely chokes back his laugh at that thought. The one thing hunting has taught him is to live in the present. Take risks and live life on the edge, because tomorrow you might get torn to shreds by a werewolf or ganked by a ghost.

Clint grins. "Learned more than a few." He stretches his arms over his head and it pulls his shirt up, flashing a small strip of tanned skin. "You look like you could use some flexibility work. Some strength training."

"If I wasn't half dead from kicking a werewolf's ass, I'd be kicking yours right now," Dean says.

Clint laughs and tosses him another beer. "You wish."


	2. Chapter 2

Clint doesn't know what to think after Meadville. Agent Sellars, Clint's handler, had called Clint into his office and told Clint that Agent Marker was dead. He'd been found in an alley, his heart ripped out by a serial killer he'd been tracking. Marker had made victim number four, and all the bodies showed signs of what appeared to be animal activity; claw marks that ripped skin open and a series of nasty bites.

They'd assumed the killer was trying to throw off law enforcement with fake claws and teeth, but apparently that had been real. Clint's still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of werewolves, and that's not even getting started on all the other creatures Dean had told him about in the motel. Clint knows what to do with mutants and science experiments gone wrong, but the supernatural? That's something else entirely, and Clint's not sure he's comfortable with it.

He hasn't told Sellars about the werewolf, and he decided it was best not to mention that in the field report either. He mentions the claws and the fangs, because everyone else saw them, but he doesn't offer up any explanations. Someone else can try and make sense of the pieces. Besides, that had been the first time Clint had encountered the supernatural on the job or in life. He doubts he'll see them again

Just to be safe, he keeps Dean's phone number and the notes Dean had written down about supernatural creatures. Clint's been slowly reading through them, emphasis on slowly. Reading has always been hard for him, and usually Sellars helps Clint out, but Clint's afraid he'll get laughed out of SHIELD for believing in werewolves and ghosts.

* * *

Two months after Meadville, Clint's on a routine job, getting intel for SHIELD, and he's sneaking through a law office late at night when the lights begin to flicker. He brushes away the curl of fear in his stomach, and Dean's voice in his ear, _the presence of supernatural is often heralded by electronic problems—radio static, cell phone cutting out, lights flickering. The most common thing you'll encounter is ghosts. I deal with those things all the time. Some people just don't know when to lie down and rest_.

Clint takes a deep breath and tells himself that he's not about to be ambushed by a ghost. He still isn't sure he believes in ghosts. Wouldn't he have seen one before in his life if they were real? Only, he's been doing some research. And by that he means some minor hacking into the FBI database. He poked around the X-Files, and there have definitely been sightings of creatures that resemble the ones Dean's told him about which means Clint's in denial, and he knows better than to think something will go away just because he doesn't want to believe in it.

Clint hears the whisper of wind through paper, and he spins around to see a little boy standing in front of him. Clint takes another deep breath, but it doesn't help to calm down the frantic stuttering if his heart. The boy has a head wound that almost splits his skull, and Clint knows that the boy couldn't have that would and still be living which means this is definitely a ghost. Or at least something creepy crawly.

Damn it, Clint thinks as he fumbles for his phone. After he gets out of this, he's going to put Dean on speed dial.

"Uh hello?" Dean asks, his voice deep, his breathing heavy.

"Did I just interrupt you having sex?" Clint asks forgetting about the ghost for a moment.

"Yes so this better be important."

Clint wants to know why Dean would have his phone on him, let alone answer it while in the middle of sex, but he has bigger problems than that right now. "There's a ghost."

Clint can hear the rustle of sheets and a few murmured words before Dean answers. "You remember what to do with a ghost?"

"Would I be calling you if I did?" Clint's proud of himself for keeping his voice almost level. He is staring down a ghost, and instead of covering his ears and pretending that it doesn't exist, he's trying to deal with it. He can't believe his op is about to be ruined by a ghost. That's going to wreck his success percentages.

"Why the hell haven't you memorized the notes I gave you? Or at least carry them around?"

"Can we do this later?" Clint shouts. Well, there goes his control, but in his defense the little boy's lips have split into a horrifying smile. "I'd rather not die right now."

"You're going to need to find the bones of the ghost and salt and burn them. In the meantime, iron will dissipate the ghost. Firing salt rounds will do the same. Please tell me you have some iron on you."

"Yeah, because that's the kind of thing I carry around in my back pocket," Clint says, backing up from the little kid that's oozing blood and has now started to approach him.

Clint looks around, but the office is full of law books and fancy fountain pens, nothing that'll fight off a ghost. There is, however, a window, and Clint knows from personal experience that he can survive a two story jump.

"Ghosts are tied to places, right?" Clint asks, keeping his eyes on the ghost as he backs up towards the window. "If I leave the building, he won't follow?"

"That's the usual case. Why?" There's a pause. "You're not about to do something stupid, are you?"

"Hold that thought," Clint says and runs at the window. He really hopes he can outrun a ghost.

Turns out, he can. He crashes through the window and lands on shards of glass None of them pierce his uniform or the thick gloves he's wearing to hide his fingerprints, but hitting the cement sidewalk still hurt plenty.

"Ow, damn it."

"You jumped out a window didn't you?" Dean asks.

Clint has no idea how his phone survived that. He's going to have to thank Stark Industries and that's something he really hates doing. Maybe he'll thank the nice PA and not Tony Stark himself.

"Desperate times," Clint says. "I think this just blew my op. Maybe I'll leave the guys a ghost as good riddance." Clint can almost feel the waves of disapproval coming through the phone.

"You're going to gank it," Dean says. "Ghosts are evil. You get rid of them when you see them. It doesn't matter who they're targeting."

"Right, right," Clint says. "So help me through this. Where do I start? Wait, let me call a clean-up crew in. I can't leave any trace of myself behind, and I think I'm good, but I don't want to take any risks. Then we'll figure this out."

"We?" Dean asks. "I'm in bed with a hot chick!"

"And she's okay with you having a late night chat with a dude? Some chick."

"Okay, so she left. Let's talk you through this, but first you're going to tell me why the hell you didn't memorize that shit. You didn't believe me before? Was seeing a werewolf not enough proof for you?"

"Calm yourself," Clint snaps. "I'm working my way through your notes. Your handwriting sucks." That's partially true at least. Clint is working through Dean's notes, but he hasn't gotten to the 'g's yet, because he doesn't have a lot of down time, and he has a tough time reading, not that he's going to tell Dean that.

"I thought you were a government agent. Shouldn't you have a photographic memory or something?"

Clint's running away from what should've been a successful op but is now going to be a crime scene and what is also apparently the home to a ghost. He's angry and being yelled at by some stupid idiot who hunts monsters for a living. It's probably why he says something he'd never admit under normal circumstances.

"I don't have a photographic memory, I have a learning disability!"

There's silence as Dean contemplates what Clint's just said, and Clint wishes he had better anger management.

"Oh. Okay. So where was this building and what does this ghost look like? It's time to do some research. Find a computer, buddy, we're hitting the internet."

* * *

Two weeks after the ghost incident, Clint is still on desk duty for almost blowing the mission, and he's making paper airplanes out of requisition forms when he gets a text from Dean.

Dean: wat's ur email?

Clint: I don't want your porn.

Dean: not porn, tho good idea.

Dean: srsly. I got something for u.

Clint: Please try to use English. I have enough trouble reading texts as it is.

Dean: Sorry. Email?

Clint:

Dean: Seriously?

Clint: Shut up. I'm not giving you my work email

Dean: Whatever, dude

* * *

A few minutes later, Clint gets several emails from Dean, all with attachments. If this is porn or a virus, Clint will use all the power at SHIELD's disposal to track Dean down and beat him up.

He opens the first email. All it says is 'School was hard for me. –Dean'. Clint looks to see the attachment. It's labeled 'John's Journal Part 1'. Clint opens it, and Dean's voice starts coming through the speakers. He's narrating the journal. His voice is shaky and a little quiet at first, and he clears his throat too much, but as he keeps reading he gets surer of himself.

Clint smiles and downloads the files so he can load them onto his iPod. He has a lot of learning to do.

Clint: Thanks for these. It means a lot.

Dean: Stop being a sap.

Clint: Whatever, dude

Dean taps his fingers on the steering wheel as he heads toward Stanford. He knows this is a bad idea. He knows that Sammy wants nothing to do with this life, and as much as he wants his family to be together, he wants Sammy to be happy even more, because that's always what's been important. Ever since Dean can remember, it's been 'make sure Sammy stays safe,' and the best way to keep Sammy safe is to keep him away from hunting.

Dean's tried to give Sammy the space he's wants, but Dean needs him now. A few days of his time isn't too much to ask. Can't be too much to ask. Maybe it is. Dean eases up on the gas and the odometer needle drops to 75. He pulls out his cell phone and goes to speed dial #3.

The phone rings and rings, but Clint doesn't pick up. He must be on a mission, Dean thinks. Dean's not sure what he was going to say anyway if Clint picked up. Was he really going to ask Clint for advice on how to handle his own brother? That's embarrassing.

Dean rolls his shoulders and presses down on the gas again. He wants to make it to Stanford at a decent time. Sam will spare a few days if it means helping their father. Dean will make sure of that.

* * *

Clint doesn't call back until the hunt is over. Dean is sitting on the edge of his motel bed, staring at his hands as Sammy—Sam, now—tosses and turns caught up in what is probably a nightmare about Jessica when his phone rings.

He flips it open before the noise can wake up Sam.

"Hello?" he whispers.

"Let me guess," Clint says, "another woman?"

Dean can't help his relief at hearing Clint's voice. There aren't many people he talks to on a regular basis, because hunting isn't exactly a social job and the occasional 'I'm not dead, son, now go hunt this thing' phone calls don't count as human interaction, and Dean's found himself missing the sound of another person's voice. Even more than that, he's missed the sound of someone who somewhat knows him and at least pretends to care.

When Dean gets really low, he'll pick up a girl at a bar, but if he's being truthful with himself—something he tries to avoid—he'd take a conversation with someone who knows him over a roll in the sack with someone he's just met. It's a relief to get to be himself, Dean the Hunter instead of Dean the Talent Scout or whatever he's pretending to be that night.

"Brother, actually. He's sleeping. Don't want to wake him up."

"Brother?" Clint asks, surprised. "I thought you two weren't on speaking terms."

"We aren't. Weren't? Probably never will be? It's been a long weekend."

"No kidding," Clint says, blowing out a heavy sigh. "You found your brother though, that has to be good, right?"

"If by found him you mean I got his girlfriend killed and I got him sucked back into the world he's been trying to escape for the past four years then yes, I found him."

Dean flops back down on his bed and drags a tired hand down his face. When he'd found out dad was missing, he hadn't hesitated before going to find Sam. Families fight, but they're also there when you need them, and Sam had actually stepped up to the plate. And then Jessica died, and Dean knows Sam feels guilty about it. Hell, Dean feels guilty about it. And to make it all worse, they didn't even find John.

"That sounds like a summary," Clint says, no judgment or accusation in his voice. "I want the play by play."

Dean runs a hand through his hair and tells Clint about sneaking into Sam's apartment and startling Sam and his girlfriend and the woman in white and breaking out of the police station with only a paperclip (Clint is suitably impressed).

"We didn't find my—we didn't find John," Dean says, "which had been the whole point of this little exercise, but Sam insisted we go back to Stanford, because he had a law school interview. We had a fight about it, I forgot how badly the two of us could fight, and then we got there, and that's when it happened."

Dean takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. "She was on the ceiling. On fire. Just like our mom. Jessica started burning, and Sam started screaming, and I grabbed him and had to drag him out of the house, just like when we were little, only he was a lot easier to carry as a sixth month old baby. He fought me this time. He thought he could save her or maybe he just wanted to die with her, and I had to pull him out of there."

Dean tries to shake off the smell of burning flesh and sulfur, the sight of a blond woman pinned to the ceiling as she died. He tries to shake off the memories, both recent and long past, and he can't.

"He shouldn't have had to see that," Dean says, his voice close to breaking. "That was the one thing I've always been grateful for about my mom's death. Sammy never had to see it. And now he knows. He knows exactly what happened, and I'm going to find the son of a bitch responsible for this, and I'm going to kill him."

Dean's free hand is curled into a fist, and his knuckles press painfully into his thigh. "Do you want to know the worst part of all of this? This whole trip, I'd thought about how great it was to be hunting with Sam again, how much I missed it, what I'd give up to have him hunting with me again. And now he is. We're hunting together, and I didn't have to give anything up. He did. His girlfriend, law school, a chance at a normal life. He's miserable. It's only been a couple hours, and he's miserable. I wish I could unwish this, you know?"

"You didn't make this happen," Clint says. "If wishes actually did come true, your life would look a lot different right now."

"No kidding. I'm sorry. I can't believe I've been droning on about this when you had a mission. Blow any shit up?"

"Oh, it was awesome," Clint says, understanding that Dean wants him to switch topics. "Homemade bombs. We had to improvise."

"Those are always the best. I personally am a big fan of tossing flaming bottles of alcohol."

"I'm surprised you would waste the alcohol."

"The explosions are totally worth it." Dean smiles and lets himself get pulled into a conversation about explosives.

* * *

"Phone, Sam," Dean wheezes holding out a hand.

Dean hates hospitals. He hates the way they smell like sterilization and the expectation of death. He hates how the walls are white and way too bright. He hates the stupid gowns that make him feel like a priss. Why does there have to be little flowers on his gown? And why does it have to be a gown?

He tries to ignore the pain in his chest and the tingling in his arms that suggest that the doctors are telling the truth. Supposedly, he's dying. He has a time stamp. A few weeks. He wonders what kind of trouble he can get into in a few weeks.

"You're not worried about this?" Sam asks. "You're dying."

"Which is why I want my phone," Dean says, snatching it from his brother. "Time to call everyone I care about. Tell them I love them the whole nine yards."

"You're calling dad?" Sam asks.

Dean snorts. "Don't be ridiculous." He flips his phone up.

Dean: Turns out I'm dying. Whoops.

Clint: That's not funny.

Dean: Got myself electrocuted. Doc says my heart's going to give out.

Clint: You decided to text me this?

Dean: I didn't realize there was a protocol on this sort of thing.

Clint: I'm calling

Dean: Don't you dare. I have enough emotional whining from my brother. I don't need it from you.

Clint: I wasn't going to whine.

Clint: And I wasn't going to be emotional.

Dean: That wasn't a proper sentence. You're not supposed to start them with conjunctions.

Clint: Helluva time to care about sentence structure.

Dean: Better late than never? I wonder how many times I'll get to use that phrase in the next few days.

Clint: I'm betting that your brother kills you before your heart gives out.

Dean: I'll take that bet, because if I lose I won't be alive for you to collect.

* * *

Clint: I have a new handler. His name is Phil Coulson. He's kind of a douche bag.

Dean: What'd he do? Tell you to put sleeves on your uniform?

Clint: Chicks dig the vest. And no. He's a stickler for paperwork. I hate paperwork.

Dean: Wah, wah, your life. Oh, damn it.

Clint: What?

Dean: Sam's dragging me on some mystical trip. Thinks he's going to get me out of dying. He's an idiot.

Clint: He's your brother

Dean: If this involves faith healers then he won't be

* * *

Dean: It involves faith healers. I'm excommunicating him

Clint: Wrong verb. You're looking for disowning.

Dean: Whatever

* * *

Dean stares at his phone for a long time. He knows that he should pick it up and dial, because he might be enough of a dick to tell someone he's dying via text message, but he probably shouldn't tell them surprise I'm alive via text message.

He doesn't want to make this call. He likes talking to Clint. The guy knows his way around a gun and knows fun facts about fighting. Hell, Dean wouldn't mind hunting with the guy sometime, but Dean also ends up talking to him more than he should. They've only been talking for a couple months, and Dean's already spilled about the demon that killed his mother and Jessica, about how John's a shitty father, and how Sam's a dumb ass little brother.

He tells Clint things so personal that there's no one outside of family who knows them. It makes Dean uncomfortable, and he's scared at what he might say if Clint gets him talking. Because Clint listens. He stays quiet on the other end of the line and lets Dean talk. He doesn't try to start any fights or tell him how to think. He just waits and Dean always fills the silence.

Dean goes to #3 in his speed dial and makes the call. At least this talking thing isn't one-sided. Dean's learned a few tricks, and he's managed to tease out some of Clint's secrets. Clint's parents are dead so he was raised in the circus. He had a great mentor until it turned out he was scamming the circus. Apparently he'd dragged Clint into it for a spell before Clint accidently shot his brother and when Clint quit, his brother joined the mentor out of spite. Or maybe for the hell of it. Either way, Clint's now working for the government and tracking down his older brother and his father figure.

Families. What a bunch of shit.

"Hello?"

Clint sounds worried, and Dean doesn't know why that makes him smile. Maybe he's a sadistic son of a bitch. Or maybe, he likes the idea that someone is finally worried about him for once.

"Hey," Dean says. "So, I'm alive."

"I figured that when you called. That faith healer work out then?"

"Not a faith healer, but it worked." Dean sinks down into the motel chair. The cushion is worn through, and he's sitting on unforgiving wood. They need to start staying at places that aren't complete dives.

"You don't seem as thrilled about being alive as I expected you to be."

This is the moment, Dean thinks. He can put on a smile and blow past the moment or he can say something. He knows Sam wants him to talk about it. Hell, Sam wants to talk about everything. He wants to have deep soul baring conversations that end in hugs and tears and fuck that. Dean is Sam's older brother. That means no weakness. He has to be tough for him. But for Clint? Some guy he met on a hunt a couple months back? That's different.

"Turns out the wife of the healer had a reaper on call."

"Like a grim reaper?"

"Very grim. She used some dark mojo to pick out people who deserved to die and sacrificed them so other people could live. Some guy has a busted heart and when it gets fixed turns out that means some poor guy has to drop dead of a heart attack."

Clint is silent.

Dean presses the heel of his palm into his eyes. "Someone had to die to save me."

"You didn't know it was going to happen like that," Clint says.

"Doesn't matter." Dean doesn't understand why Clint doesn't get it. Why Sam doesn't get it. Why no one but him seems to get it. "I'm supposed to be saving these people, and instead I'm getting them killed."

"You can't save everyone," Clint says.

If Sam had even dared to think something like that, Dean would've strangled him, but it's different coming from Clint, because Clint isn't trying to pacify him. Clint's speaking from experience. He knows what it's like to be out in the field, fighting for the right side, and losing men, because that's what happens. Not everyone can be saved, some people get caught in the crossfire, and Dean hates it. He hates that what he does will never be enough. He hates that people will die on his watch. And he hates even more that someone had to die to save him.

"I should be able to."

"I led a rescue team into the US Embassy in Libya this past week," Clint says.

"Isn't this top secret information?"

"This phone's not tapped, and you're feeling guilty that one person died to save your life. I don't think you're going to compromise your country by selling secrets to terrorists."

Dean smiles because that's Clint speak for 'I trust you'. He leans back in the chair, shifting until he's at least somewhat comfortable and listens to Clint's daring rescue and how much he hates the team they're having him work with.

* * *

While Dean's making private phone calls in the bathroom, Sam makes one of his own. He steps outside in case Dean comes out from whoever he's being all secretive about—probably phone sex—and walks around the corner of the motel.

His phone call goes straight to voicemail, not that he'd expected any less. If John hadn't shown up when Dean was dying, Sam doesn't know why he'd bother picking his phone up now.

The phone beeps and Sam leaves his message. "Thanks for the help, you son of a bitch. He's alive but don't come say hi. We don't want to see you."

* * *

Clint rubs at his arm. He'd overdone it at the archery range the other day, and now he's sore. He hates being sore. It makes him feel weak. He'd gotten the word from Coulson that they had a lead on Trick Shot, that they were closing in on him. Clint knows he's going to be called in when they get close. There's no one with the accuracy that Clint has. He can make impossible shots, and he knows that if he lets the string go, he'll hit Trick. He's just not sure if he'll pull the string back.

He needs to stop this line of thought. This is the line of thought that got him a sore arm in the first place. He'd gone down to the archery range to prove to himself that he could hit this shot, that he could pull the string back even when his arm was sore and aching, and he wanted to do nothing but shower and stuff his face and go to sleep.

His phone is ringing before he even realizes he'd dialed.

"Yo," Dean says.

"Talk to me."

Dean recognizes that tone. It's the serious shit is happening in my life, and I don't know how to deal with it tone.

"I own a 1967 Chevy Impala and man is she gorgeous. The longest relationship I've ever had. She's sleek and full of curves and she responds to my every touch."

"Car porn," Clint says. "Classy."

Dean grins. "I'm a classy guy, what can I say?"

Clint listens to Dean talk about his car for over twenty minutes, prattling on about where he's taken her, her worst accidents, all the work he's done on her. Clint catalogues all the details, but mostly he lets the words wash over him. Dean's voice is a little rough but there's a softness to it now that he's talking about his car. It's the same softness that slips in when he's recalling a childhood memory or wishing Sam could have his old life back. It's a rare glimpse of the guy hiding behind the cursing and the tough act and Clint doesn't know what he'd done to deserve this kind of trust but he's glad for it.

Clint doesn't have very many friends. The circus kept him moving around too much to put down roots, and the people he had considered friends, Barney and Trick Shot had ended up betraying him and really they were more of family than friends.

After the circus, Clint moved around, because he wasn't good at forming attachments—still isn't—and he never really settled until he joined SHIELD, and that's only a technicality. He has an apartment and a steady job, but this job takes him all over the place. He'll spend a night there, a couple weeks here, get lost in a desert somewhere, and it makes his apartment just another place where sometimes he rests his head.

He doesn't mind not having a permanent home or a couple buddies that he can call up if something happens. He has himself, and more and more lately, he has Dean. They're not the kind of friends that show up uninvited to shoot the breeze with each other over a couple beers. They're the kind that call each other up to say 'hey my life sucks' or 'hey wanna hear what I blew up today' and that works for Clint.

"Hawkeye!" someone shouts—Michaels, Clint thinks—and Clint hopes Dean didn't hear that.

There's a moment of silence. "Hawkeye?" Dean asks and Clint can hear his smirk through the phone. "Please tell me they're talking to you."

"This isn't funny," Clint says even though it won't do any good.

"Are you kidding?" Dean laughs. "It's freakin' hilarious. You have a code name. I knew you were government, but still. Please tell me you sleep in a nest. Eat raw meat? Fly?"

"I hate you," Clint says and hangs up.

* * *

Dean: I hate amateurs

Clint: I'm guessing this has a point. Ever want to get around to it?

Dean: You're snippy. No one's fondled your bow lately?

Clint: Are you ever going to stop with the lame jokes? I've heard them all before

Dean: You want to pierce me with your arrowhead?

Dean: Can I stroke your shaft?

Dean: Want to pierce me with a blunt one?

Clint: Blunt tips are for small game only. Have something you need to tell me?

Dean: You're a dick. Our hunt is getting screwed up by freakin' amateurs. I hate amateurs

Clint: What are you whining about?

Dean: These guys run a blog about the supernatural. Fancy themselves ghost hunters. They're idiots

Clint: Maybe they just need some guidance from a big bad hunter like you

Dean: You're a dick

Clint: You need better insults. Your vocabulary is lacking

Dean: Go screw yourself

Dean snaps his phone shut and looks over at Sam. "Any ideas on how to kill a ghost that isn't actually a ghost?"

Sam frowns and continues scrolling through a webpage. "Obviously it's not a ghost."

"Any ideas, genius?"

Sam grins. "Of course. I'm looking into tulpas right now."

* * *

Dean: Damn amateurs

Clint: I'll call you as soon as I'm out of this meeting. Don't get yourself killed in the meantime

Dean: Texting during a meeting. Look at you, you rebel. I'm getting all hot and bothered over here

Clint: You're unbelievable

Dean: I just torched a house. I'm allowed to be hot. And I almost got killed because of those stupid kids. Hence bothered. Aw, did you think I was talking about you?

Clint: Meeting

Dean smirks as he climbs into the Impala. It's so easy getting under Clint's skin.


	3. Chapter 3

Warnings: People die in this chapter. Two of them are canon deaths.

* * *

They've found him. Clint gets the call when he's lounging in his SHIELD issued apartment tossing a Nerf basketball into a hoop he's installed on the bathroom door, and Coulson's voice is too cheerful for the assignment he's just given.

Clint's pack is waiting for him by the door, and he picks it up and slings it over his shoulder, moving before Coulson even hangs up. It's time to go hunt Trick Shot.

Coulson has a car waiting for him outside his apartment, and Clint climbs in, surprised that it's only the two of them.

"We're meeting the rest on site," Coulson says. "They're being debriefed on the way, but I figure you only need the abbreviated version."

Clint's been getting along better with his new handler, paperwork aside, but this conversation is enough to make him hate anyone. There are two people he doesn't like to talk about; Trick Shot and Barney. They're the only two people's he's ever cared about, and now he has to kill them.

He has no illusions about what's going to happen after they take down Trick Shot. They're going to go after Barney. This is what happens when you choose the wrong path, Clint reminds himself. Criminals get hunted down and put into jail, but Trick Shot and Barney have gone too far which means they have to die.

Trick Shot and Barney used to work together, first as petty thieves and then they moved into being hired mercenaries. Shortly after they made that transition, they had a falling out. Barney went down a darker path, but they both killed people. Now Clint has to track them down and kill them. End the cycle. He wonders who will come after him when the time comes.

He unconsciously rubs at his shoulder. Just underneath the leather of his vest he has a raised scar from his last encounter with Trick Shot. He'd gotten it back when they were still working together.

Before Trick and Barney were together, Trick and Clint had worked together and they'd been doing a routine robbery when things went south. They'd been at Travis Wilkins' house, a notorious criminal, and Clint had seen nothing wrong with breaking in and taking a few things Travis had stolen from other people. But then there were guards where there weren't supposed to be, and one of them shot at Clint so he shot back, and he hit him. He hit his shoulder, because Clint wasn't interested in killing people then, and he would've recognized that grunt of pain anywhere.

Barney.

Clint had ripped off the man's mask and underneath it was his brother. That was when Clint decided he was done working for Trick Shot. It hadn't made much of a difference, though. Barney had been more than happy to take Clint's place, and Clint had lost him all the same. Trick Shot had hit Clint with an arrow as a parting gift.

"Hey."

Clint's not sure if it's the softly spoken word or the gentle touch to his hand that pulls him out of his thoughts, but when he refocuses on reality Coulson is watching him with worried eyes.

Clint shrugs off his hand. "So you said you were going to give me the rundown?"

Coulson nods as he pulls his hand back, suddenly completely professional again. "Yes. We've gotten intel that he's trying to hit the Stark Vault tonight. He has a team of four; a vault cracker, an explosive expert, a tech expert, and a look out. Obviously he's the look out. We're going to take the whole team down."

"Take down how?" Clint asks as if he doesn't already know. "We bringing them in?"

"They stole from the Russians two months ago. Russians knew they were coming and tried to trap them. Fifty people died. Mostly civilians. We're taking them down."

Clint nods, like this is news to him, and he hadn't spent the past week training to make sure he'll be able to make the kill shot when the time comes. He takes people down on jobs all the time. This is no different. Except it is. He can't lie to himself. This job is personal. "Where will I be positioned?"

"South exit in case they try to run."

"Trick Shot will be on corner opposite north side," Clint says. He knows Trick Shot even after all these years. He can name Trick Shot's preferred perches from best to worst from only a glance at the building plans.

"You're not assigned to Trick Shot," Coulson says. "You're assigned to the South exit."

Clint shakes his head. "You can't treat this job like it's different."

"This job is different."

Clint closes his right hand into a fist and takes a deep breath. "I'm your best man, and you know it. Don't stick me on the bench."

Coulson raises his eyebrows. "If you were on the bench then you wouldn't be in this car with me right now."

"So what, I'm second string?" Clint can't believe this. They've trained him to be a damn good agent. He can face his past. He has to. He can't move on until he does.

"Can we stop with the sports metaphors?" Coulson asks. His voice has a hard edge to which means he's in serious mode. "You have your orders, and you will follow them."

Normally this is the point where Clint would stop talking. He knows how to follow orders. It's something he's known since he was little. He's searched for anyone who will tell him what to do, give him direction, give him meaning. Trick Shot gave it to him, now Coulson does. Clint's only disobeyed orders once, and that was when he walked away from Trick Shot.

He'd been a mess when SHIELD found him, and he let them build him back up, piece by piece. He trusts them, because he sure as hell can't trust himself, but there's something bubbling underneath his surface right now. Something unfamiliar. Something that tells him Coulson is wrong. Clint is strong enough to do this. They need Clint to do this.

"Why are you bringing me then?" Clint asks. He's not going to disobey, but he is questioning, and it's a perilous line he's treading right now.

Coulson's eyes snap up to meet his. "Pardon?"

Clint shrugs. "You heard me. Why are you bringing me? Anyone can do look out on an exit that's not going to be used. You don't want me in the fight but you want me nearby? Is this some sort of test? Are you testing my loyalty to you?"

"No, nothing like that," Coulson says actually sounding offended at the thought. "The truth is," Coulson pauses, because he has orders not to share this with Clint, but he's not going to send the guy in blind. "The truth is Trick Shot is good. He's been evading teams for years now, and no one wants you to be the one to bring him down, but we're afraid you might be the only one who can."

Clint nods. Right, they were assigning him a useless position so he could ditch it if things went south. He rubs the back of his neck, because this just got real. He's imagined what it would be like to take Trick Shot down for years. Not killing him per se but bringing him to justice. Clint's imagined the surprise on Trick's face when he realizes that Clint's surpassed him. They'd always been teacher and student, and Clint had always been not quite good enough, but Clint's been training with a new team these days. He has some new tricks, and he knows he's better now. And tonight he's going to prove it.

"I'm going to need you to tell me," Clint says and he looks anywhere but Coulson.

"Tell you what?"

This is what Clint misses about Sellars, his last handler. Sellars knew him inside and out. Clint wouldn't even have to put the request in. Sellars would know, he would've already issued the orders, but Coulson isn't Sellars, and even though it's been a couple months, Coulson still doesn't know all of Clint's quirks.

Clint looks Coulson in the eye. "I need you to tell me where to hit."

"I'm still not—"

"For fuck's sake," Clint growls. "I'm a marksman, I never miss that's my whole deal, right? So I need you to tell me where to hit him, because if you don't," Clint falters for a moment, "if you don't it won't be a kill shot." Clint drops his eyes to his lap and his voice softens. "I need my orders."

"Right," Coulson says. "Of course. If it comes down to it, you kill him. You aim for his heart, his head, his neck, any artery that will spill enough blood to kill him before he can get help. Trick Shot is dying tonight."

Clint grinds his teeth together and forces himself to hold it together. He's gotten his orders. He can do this. Focus on the mission. It's a job like any other. Watch the south exit, keep an eye out for his teammates. Kill if necessary.

He pulls out his phone to send a quick text.

Clint: We're getting drunk tonight

Dean: Bad day?

Clint: It's about to be one hell of a night.

Dean: Good luck

Clint: Don't wait up

Dean: You promised me a drink. There's no way I'm sleeping until I get it.

Clint: What are you up to?

Dean: Hunting something big

Clint: How big?

Dean: Focus on your mission. We'll talk over drinks

Clint sighs. Looks like neither of them are going to have a good night. Awesome.

* * *

Clint listens the chatter over the comm. as he observes the empty alley from his perch. There has been no movement on his end. Not even a stray cat has wandered this way. He can normally sit for hours without a problem, but tonight he's antsy.

He knows it's because Trick Shot is only a few rooftops away, and he wants nothing more than to abandon his post and go after him, but he can't move until he gets the signal. Apparently there are some Stark Weapons blueprints being kept in the vault, and if Trick's team gets to them and escapes with them then there are going to be bigger problems than Trick.

"I've got eyes on Eliot," Martin says over the comm.

Clint rolls his eyes at Trick's code name. His initials, T.S., were too obvious, and Coulson—of course it was Coulson—thought it would be clever to make his codename Eliot, because of some poet that Clint's never heard of.

"You have a shot?" Coulson asks.

"Yep, I'm tak—shit."

Clint heard the sound of an arrow traveling before it hit Martin. Apparently Martin hadn't heard or seen it coming. Martin gasps, a wet sickly sound and then he goes quiet. Clint curses softly. This is why he should've been assigned to Trick Shot in the first place.

His legs itch, demanding that he move, but he stays still, waiting for his orders.

"That's the first he's killed but the third he's put out of commission for this fight," Coulson says. "Formation four is a go."

That's Clint's cue to move. Someone's going to come up and take his place, and he's going to go find Trick. He wipes sweaty hands on his pants, grabs his bow, and moves. He slips along the rooftop and leaps across the alley to the roof next to the innocuous storage unit where Stark Industries' greatest secrets are kept.

It isn't until he's landed and halfway across the rooftop before he realizes that he's already screwed up. He's approaching this like he would a regular target, but Trick knows him. Trick expects him to come from the side. He'll be waiting for it.

Time for a change of plans. Clint leaps to the storage unit and he lands hard on the roof, scratching a layer of skin off his hands. Wonderful. He clips his bow to his back, next to his quiver, and begins to commando crawl across the roof. He can't afford to give his position away or make himself a target.

He scuffs up his arm guards and he's slowly tearing a hole through the knees of his pants, but he can worry about that later. Each slide of material against the grainy surface of the roof is a couple inches closer to his target. Trick Shot. Buck. No, target. His target.

Clint hasn't thought of the man as Buck in years, and he doesn't know why the memories are flooding back now. It was Buck who first taught him how to hold a bow, how to draw the string back, the twang of the string as it vibrated on release, the snap of the string against his arm. Buck opened a whole new world to Clint, and now Clint is going to repay him for that by killing him.

Trick Shot, Clint reminds himself. Notorious criminal. Menace to society. Target. He's on a mission and he has a target. He can do this.

Clint reaches the edge and drops his heat vision goggles over his eyes. He can see the heat signature on the next building. It can only be one person. Clint checks anyways.

"North side, you said?" Clint confirms.

"North side," Coulson says. "Good luck."

"I don't need luck," Clint says, the same he says every time Coulson wishes him good luck. He's grateful for the routine, for the reminder that this is like every other mission. He nocks an arrow and pulls the string back.

It's awkward at this angle, but he can do it. He can see a shadow of a movement, and he knows Trick's just exposed himself. Clint has a clear shot at his head. Trick's waiting for an attack from the side, and Clint can't help his smile. Trick can't read him anymore. Clint's changed.

His fingers brush his ear, and his arm is starting to tremble from holding the string taut for so long. He needs to shoot before he loses his opportunity. He needs to let go.

Clint lines up his shot again, even though he doesn't need to, and he takes a deep breath. As he lets out his breath, his entire body relaxes, and his fingers fall off the string, and the arrow goes. It flies true, because it has no emotions to influence its path, no doubt to make it waver. It pierces the air then pierces the target.

The night is quiet, and Clint can hear the thud of a head hitting concrete.

He touches his hand to his ear. "Target's down. Going in to confirm."

Clint half expects Coulson to tell him to stand down, to tell him that someone else will cover it.

"We've got your back," Coulson says instead.

Clint lets out a slow breath and makes his way to the next rooftop.

Trick's crumpled on the ground when Clint gets there, bleeding from a neck wound, and he's coughing up some blood as well. Clint stands over him, watches the recognition flash through Trick's eyes before his head lolls to the side, defeated.

Clint feels like this is the time he should say something cheesy like 'so the student surpasses the master' or 'tables have turned' or something from all those action films he likes to watch in his downtime, but this isn't a movie. This is real life.

Clint bends down and watches blood trickle out of his mouth. Should he apologize? Thank Trick for what he's done? Gloat? Stand in stoic silence? He doesn't know what to do. He wasn't given orders for this moment.

"Congrats, kid," Trick rasps, his voice fading away. "But Barney'll get you. Always better than you."

Clint knows that Barney's next on the list. Barney's a hand for hire, and he's been working for a Nicaraguan dictator for the past year and a half. SHIELD's been working an undercover op to open an opportunity to wipe out the dictator for six years now. They haven't gotten very far, but they might try and speed things up now that Clint's proved he can handle his past.

* * *

Clint does his best not to think after the mission is over. He reports every detail of the mission to Coulson on their drive back to Clint's apartment, and Coulson writes it down. He's good about working around Clint's trouble with reading and writing, and he's not even a dick about it which is even better.

Clint's underestimated the guy. He's quiet and a stickler for rules, but he's a good handler. Clint gives the man's shoulder a squeeze on the way out of the car as a way of saying thanks.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" Coulson asks, worried by the unusual physical contact.

Clint holds up his phone. "Got a date tonight. You don't need to worry about a thing."

He grins and slams the car door shut. Coulson orders a couple guys to keep an eye on Clint's apartment. Just in case.

* * *

Clint bypasses the beer and grabs his handle of Vladdy and plops down on his bed, his phone already ringing.

"Yo," Dean says but his voice sounds strained and there's a heavy note of exhaustion weighing down the word. "Guessing your night is over?"

"Sitting down with a handle of vodka."

"Shit. It was a rough night. You going to mix it with anything?"

Clint laughs and takes a swig and then he's spluttering as the cheap vodka burns down his throat. "I killed my mentor tonight."

"At least use a chaser. On a government salary you have to be drinking the cheap stuff."

Clint's gotten the confession out of the way, and he's glad Dean hasn't rattled off a series of useless platitudes or switched into emotional syrup. All Clint wants is for someone to treat him like an adult, like he's not fragile, like he's not going to break apart at any moment, because if someone expects him to be strong then he can be strong. And he desperately wants to be strong.

"Screw chasers." Clint takes another drink. "You off duty yet?"

"So what kind of mission was it?" Dean asks.

"Trick had a team set up to steal weapon blueprints from one of the top weapons manufacturers in the world. Rumor had it they were going to sell them to Irish extremists. We were in charge of making sure they didn't escape with the plans."

"Did you?"

Clint grins and then realizes that Dean can't see the expression through the phone. "Damn right we did. Also made sure they didn't escape with their lives."

Dean is quiet for a moment. "How many?"

"Four. Standard team."

"They were human?"

There's something vulnerable in Dean's voice that Clint hasn't heard in a long time. Sometimes he forgets that while Dean's a hunter, he's still a civilian. They don't understand things like needs of the many and that sometimes people have to die.

"My world not yours, remember?" Clint takes another pull off the bottle. His stomach is starting to warm. He wonders how much longer until the rest of him is warm like that.

"Right," Dean says and there's anger in his voice. "I forgot that in your world it's okay to kill other human beings."

Clint slams his vodka down on the table, glad that Vladdy comes in a plastic container or else it would've shattered. "Fuck you. You think that was easy for me tonight? I had to kill the man who raised me! Who taught me everything I knew, but those weapons would've killed tens of thousands of people in the wrong hands, and I had orders."

"Orders." Dean laughs. "You always follow orders?"

"Yes."

"Well, fuck orders. Grow a brain. Try thinking for yourself. Do you think it's right to kill other human beings?"

"I'm a government agent," Clint says. "Killing people is part of my job description."

"I didn't take you for a company man. I thought you actually used that head on your shoulders."

"I don't need this from you," Clint says. "I don't need to feel any more guilt over what I did."

"Next time they give you a kill order, will you follow it?" Dean asks.

Clint rolls his eyes. "Of course I will."

"Then you're not feeling enough guilt," Dean says. "Enjoy your binge. Try not to choke on your own vomit."

He hangs up and Clint starts banging his head gently against the wall. What does Dean know about following orders anyways? He's a vigilante. He doesn't know Clint's life. He has no room to judge.

* * *

Dean hangs up the phone and slams his fist against the steering wheel. His father is off trying to cheat Meg while he and Sam wait to try and kill the yellow-eyed demon. Dean didn't think they should split up, but no one ever listens to him. His father's too caught up trying to sacrifice his life and Sam's too hell bent on revenge, and Dean wishes they'd never found the yellow-eyed demon.

Someone's going to die, because of this mess. Maybe they'll all die tonight, John at the hands of Meg, and Sam and Dean at the hands of the yellow-eyed demon. Dean wonders what it feels like to burn alive.

He looks at his phone, wonders if he should text an apology. Or maybe a goodbye. He'd been a little harsh on Clint. The guy had just killed someone close to him, and that's why Dean doesn't let people get close, because then they're liabilities.

But Dean also values human life. He's trying to vanquish evil, and killing humans is definitely on the evil list no matter what they've done to supposedly deserve it. It's not Dean's responsibility to mete out justice for humans.

Sam slides into the car, returning from his piss break. "Anything in the window?"

Dean looks back up at Monica's house. "Still quiet."

He slips his phone back into his pocket. He can't let Clint's problems distract him right now. He has enough of his own.

* * *

Everything seems to happen in a blur. Sam tries to run into a flaming house to chase after the yellow-eyed demon, their father gets kidnapped and is possibly dead, the boys find Bobby, kidnap Meg, hunt down their father, confront the demon, then there's a car crash, and the next thing he knows, Dean's watching his father crumple to the ground, dead.

He doesn't check his phone until a couple days after that, because apparently Dean had died in the crash and now John's dead, and the Colt's gone, and there's one very obvious explanation, but Dean doesn't want to believe it.

His father would never make a deal with a demon. Especially not one that would give up the Colt. John has made it very clear that killing the yellow-eyed demon is more important that anything, even his own life. There's no way John would give up their best bet for killing it. Especially not for Dean.

He has five texts and a voicemail when he checks his phone, all from Clint.

Clint: Fuck you, I did the right thing.

Clint: VODKKKAA!1

Clint: This hangover's a bitch

Clint: I'm sorry

Clint: Really, I'm sorry. I think you might be right

The voicemail is dated two days ago, and Clint sounds worried.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry about a couple nights ago. I know better than to drink after a job like that, but I wanted to forget. You have every right to be angry with me, but I haven't heard from you, and in my line of work that usually means something bad. Just let me know you're okay. We don't have to talk. Okay. Bye."

Dean sighs and rubs at his eyes. He'd almost forgotten about their little spat. Amazing how your entire life falling apart will do that to you. He dials number two on his speed dial.

"You bastard," Clint says as way of greeting, "I thought you were dead."

"I was."

There's a long pause and Dean contemplates that maybe that wasn't the best way to bring up what had happened, but he's not feeling too charitable to the world right now. John's dead, Sam's as obsessed as ever, and they don't have any way to kill the demon even if they do find it. Not that Dean plans on looking. He wants to stay as far away from it as possible. He doesn't want to lose any more members of his family to it.

"Scary thing is, I don't think you're joking."

"I'm not. I don't know how I came back, but I did."

"You have any ideas?"

Dean's impressed that the man doesn't even sound surprised the things like this are possible. Of course, he's already proven that he's the kind of man who takes someone at their word once he trusts them. Follows orders without hesitation. Dean remembers when he was like that. He'd do anything as long as the command fell from John Winchester's lips.

"Yeah. Dad dropped dead a couple minutes after I came back. That's never a good sign."

"Wait, your dad's dead?"

"My family's just dying all over the place."

* * *

Everything I know about breaking into top secret vaults I learned from Dollhouse. Blue skies.


	4. Chapter 4

Warnings: Reference to suicide (one character is worried about another character's mental health, no actual suicide).

* * *

Dean: I hate being right

Clint: Usually you're smug about these sorts of things. What happened?

Dean: Are you on a mission?

Clint: I'm on mission 'recover from the last mission'. You can call.

"If he wasn't already dead, I would fucking kill him," Dean says as soon as Clint picks up the phone.

"There are a lot of dead men. You talking anyone specific?"

"My dad. I was right. He sold his soul so I could live. He's roasting in hell right now. Fucking idiot!"

Clint hears a foot collide with a wall, and he realizes he's completely out of his depth with this one. He's been slowly getting used to the idea of the supernatural but demons and hell and resurrections and souls? That's a little much.

"Maybe hell's not that bad."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that," Dean says.

"He traded his life for yours. That should mean something, right?"

"Yeah. It means a bunch of fucking responsibility! I have spent my life taking care of this family, and finally I was going to be dead. I was probably going to heaven. I was going to forget about demons and hellfire and all the nasty things I've seen. I was going to get to rest. And now, I'm living again. And for what? What am I alive for?"

"Really? Meaning of life? That's the question you're unloading on me tonight? What the hell are any of us alive for? You should be asking a priest that and not me."

Dean laughs. "Not big on religion."

That gives Clint pause. "Wait, you hunt the supernatural. You know that demons and hell are real and you don't believe in God?"

"Angels don't exist, and I'm fairly certain God doesn't either. Don't know why he'd let the Earth go to shit if he was alive."

"Huh. I went to Buck's funeral yesterday. It was weird seeing as I was the one who killed him and all. I was hoping to see Barney there, but I guess the dictator has him on a pretty tight leash."

Dean laughs again. "Our lives. Fucking unreal."

"I'll drink a beer to that," Clint says.

"I'll drink five."

* * *

Dean: It's happening

Clint: What's happening?

Dean: Everyone apocalypse movie I've ever seen is coming true

Clint: Zombies?

Dean: And roadblocks and regular people carrying shotguns through the street. People turning on their neighbors.

Clint: Are you happy about this?

Dean: A little. You have to take humor where you can in this line of work.

Clint: Isn't that the truth

Dean: Bad things on your end too?

Clint: Making plans to go after my brother

Dean: You could always say no

Clint: I'm not you

Dean: Come visit. I'll work on that

Clint: My handler would kill you

Dean: Not if the zombies get me first

* * *

Dean: Let's go to dinner

Clint: Are you serious?

Dean: Always

Clint: I can't take time off

Dean: Not even to eat?

Clint: We're probably not even in the same state

Dean: You're an idiot. Get dinner and call me

"I don't understand you," Clint says sitting in front of a grilled chicken salad that's also loaded with French fries. He'd picked up the French fry habit when he was travelling through Pittsburgh.

"This is what friends do," Dean says around a mouthful of burger.

Clint pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Friends?"

Dean shuffles uncomfortably in his chair. "Acquaintances. Brothers in arms. You know."

"No, friends is good," Clint says. "I could use a friend."

"Not very common in our line of work." Dean shoves a French fries into his mouth. His phone beeps. It's a text from Sam, wondering where Dean is. Dean ignores it.

"So," Dean drawls, a smirk twitching at his lips. "What're you eating?"

Clint rolls his eyes. "This sounds like a set-up to a bad porno."

"You watch porn?" Dean makes a tsking sound. "I'm very disappointed in you."

"Fuck you. I'm eating a salad."

"Really? A salad? Remind me never to actually go to dinner with you."

"There are French fries on it," Clint defends. "What are you eating?"

"Bacon cheeseburger. They're my favorite. I also have onion rings, French fries, and a shake."

"That's disgusting."

"You're just jealous."

Clint concedes the point. "Handler has me on a special diet. I have to have the right body proportions to do all my acrobatics."

Dean shakes his head. "Freakin' conformist."

"French fries," Clint reminds. "Are we really going to fight about my attitude towards my job again?"

"Sorry, dear," Dean says and Clint can hear him smirking through the phone. "How was work today? Blow anything up?"

Clint laughs, and Dean closes his eyes and lets the sound wash over him. He can't remember the last time he's heard someone laugh. He and Sam haven't exactly been having a great road trip recently.

He lets Clint pull him into a mundane conversation about sparring and they compare fighting techniques and give a greatest hits (with some exaggeration) from their respective jobs, and Dean finds himself smiling.

A beep briefly interrupts Clint's story about a fight he got in with the strongman at the circus. Dean has another text from Sam, telling him to get back to the hotel at once.

Dean sighs. "I hate to call an end to this but I have to go. Apparently Sammy can't stand to be without me."

"No fair, he gets you all the time."

Dean grins and blows a kiss into the phone.

"Did you just kiss me?" Clint asks.

Dean laughs. "Hell yes. That's a mild first date for me, you know. It means I respect you."

Dean snaps his phone shut before Clint can come up with a response. He shoves his phone into his pocket, throws out his trash, and rounds the corner of the motel. The door's unlocked when he gets there, and he's going to yell at Sam about it, because even though most things that want to kill them can't be stopped by a door, it's always good to lock the door, but Sam doesn't give him time.

Sam is standing in the middle of the room, his arms crossed over his chest and his 'we need to talk' face firmly on. Dean rolls his eyes.

"I'm worried about you," Sam says.

Dean shoves past him and throws himself down on his bed. "Can we not have this conversation right now?"

"You almost killed an innocent human today."

"Sorry that a potential apocalypse calls for desperate measures."

"You haven't been right since dad died."

"No shit," Dean says and he leans over the side of his bed to grab his computer.

"It's been even worse since you found out about the deal." Sam pauses and stares at Dean as if he can force Dean to meet his eyes and even talk out his feelings through sheer force of will. "I don't like it when you go off alone and don't answer your phone."

Dean's eyes are hard as they snap up to meet Sam's. "What are you saying?"

Sam shifts uncomfortably. "I'm saying I'm worried about you."

Dean pulls up a new browser window. "Dad sold his soul so I could come back to life. I'm not going to off myself."

"Look, I'm sorry," Sam says, holding up his hands, but he's starting to get angry. "I just care about you. That's all."

Dean logs into his Busty Asian Beauties account, and he sets his computer up on the bed and reaches for the button of his jeans.

"What are you doing?" Sam asks.

"What the hell do you think I'm doing?" Dean jams the zipper down. "I'm enjoying being alive."

Sam rolls his eyes and grabs his coat off his bed. "I'll be back in an hour. Try not to make a mess."

Dean gives him a little wave and as soon as the door slams behind Sam he pulls out his phone and dials Clint.

"Calling so soon?" Clint asks, his voice teasing. "I thought there was a three day rule after the first date. Should've known you'd be clingy." He pauses when an obvious moan filters through the phone. "Are you watching porn?"

"Not really," Dean says. "It's streaming, but I'm not watching. Just used it to get my brother out of the room. He's being a dick."

"Let me get this straight. You have porn on your computer right now, and you decided to call me?"

"Busty Asian babes aren't doing it for me these days," Dean says and he tries to make it sound like a joke.

"That's your type?"

Not anymore, Dean thinks, leaning back in his bed. He drowns out the clichéd dialogue and the fake sounds and talks to Clint for another 45 minutes before he gets ready for bed. He pretends to be asleep when Sam gets back.

* * *

Clint doesn't know what to do about Dean. Clint meets plenty of people at bars, but that never leads to any kind of relationship. Either he's on a mission so his focus is pretty tight or he's grabbing a drink with some co-workers. In neither situation does he let himself get picked up at a bar.

And, okay, Dean didn't pick him up at a bar. Dean flirted a little and then disappeared with Clint's target and they'd both almost died, because it turned out she was a werewolf. Clint had still ended up in Dean's motel room and they'd drank together, spilled parts of their life stories, exchanged numbers, and now they're what?

Friends? They've never seen each other since their first meeting. They exchange texts and phone calls and occasionally get drunk on speakerphone, but does that make them friends? They've told each other their darkest secrets, at least Clint's confessed some pretty heavy things, and he has to believe that Dean's told him the worst parts of his life, because Clint can't imagine his life being any worse. Doesn't want to imagine it.

So they're friends. Only, they went on a date. A phone date. Do those even exist? Only, Dean's so good at teasing, at riling Clint up and then laughing things off, and Clint doesn't know if the date was actually a date or if Dean was just fooling around. And then once you add the porn aspect things get even more confusing. Who has a casual conversation with a friend when there's porn in the background?

Clint groans and presses his phone to his forehead. This is what he knows. He enjoys talking to Dean, he finds himself missing the sound of Dean's voice when they fight, he finds his chest uncomfortably tight when Dean's telling Clint about the latest tragedy in his life, and he has difficulty concentrating when he goes more than three days without hearing from Dean.

Clint always gives fair warning when he's going on a mission and a time estimate of how long the mission will take so Dean doesn't worry. Dean doesn't show the same courtesy. He'll stop communicating for days at a time, and Clint panics every time, because the guy has almost died once and actually died once so Clint's completely justified in his worry. And friends worry about each other.

Clint wishes there was someone he could talk to about this, but this is too personal to discuss with his handler, and he doesn't have any other friends besides Dean so it looks like he's going to be muddling through this on his own. He'll just follow Dean's lead. Clint's good at that, observing, taking clues from his surroundings, waiting before he acts. Besides, what would he do even if he did act? Neither of them are quitting their jobs. Their relationship, no matter what kind it is, is going to revolve around hasty phone calls and the occasional text.

Clint really needs to get out and meet someone.

"We might need to call you in," Coulson says dropping two files down in front of Clint.

Clint doesn't startle, because he's a well-trained agent, but he is taken by surprise. This is what he gets for letting his mind drift while he's at work. He props his feet up on the table and ignores Coulson's stern look as he picks up the first file.

He opens it and Dean's face looks back at him. Dean Winchester, Clint reads, and he realizes that he'd never known Dean's last name before. He looks back to Coulson. "You have this on audio file?"

"So you don't recognize him?" Coulson asks.

A test, Clint thinks. He wonders if he passed.

"They've picked Dean and his brother Sam up in Little Rock. They're at the Green River County Detention Center. FBI's moving in on them."

Clint raises his eyebrows and leans back in his chair. "You want to steal a case from the FBI? What'd they do to piss you off lately?"

Coulson doesn't smile. "The Winchesters are dangerous, and they've eluded the FBI before. Last time, they left a couple murders in their wake."

The skinwalker, Clint remembers. Dean had told him about that case. Sounded nasty. Clint can't believe that Sam and Dean managed to get themselves arrested. He thought they were smarter than that. Though on the plus side, the reason that Dean's not answering the phone isn't that he's dead. It's that he's in jail. It's not too much of a comfort.

"Why did you think I'd recognize him?" Clint asks.

"His face matches a man you met on an assignment. A civilian that interfered with your case."

"We interfered with his," Clint says, "and I'd be dead without him. The whole unit would probably be dead. The Winchesters are dangerous but not in the way you think."

"So you do know him," Coulson says.

"I recognize him from the assignment," Clint says. "We had a drink once it was over. Chick was a werewolf. Dean ganked—killed her. Saved my ass. Told me about his life over our beers."

"About the mysterious disappearance of his mother and then his father and the grave robbing and murder and all the other crimes he's committed?"

"He's against killing humans," Clint says. "No problem killing the supernatural. All the digging up of graves is so that he can salt and burn bones. Only way to kill a ghost."

Coulson peers at Clint as if he's trying to figure out if Clint's trying to joke or is in fact crazy. "You let one meeting with Dean Winchester compromise you? He is a dangerous man."

Clint rolls his eyes. "Look into the field report for the assignment. Chick got filled with bullets and then she stood up and went back to trying to kill Dean. Her body wasn't made of Kevlar."

"But she was a werewolf?"

Clint grins. "Now you're starting to get it."

Coulson shakes his head. "If they escape the FBI you're going to track them down."

"I thought Barney and the dictator were my priorities right now."

Coulson frowns across the table. "You're awfully attached for only having met him once."

Clint shrugs. "He saved my life, and he has good taste in beer. Plus, he's protecting the world from monsters most of them don't even know exist. I'm including you in that group, by the way. The ignorant people, not the monsters."

Clint flashes Coulson an insolent grin and thumbs through Sam's file.

* * *

"They escaped," Coulson says as he takes a sip of his coffee.

Clint already knows this, because he'd gotten a text from Dean saying 'wild story for you later,' which he takes to mean they busted out of jail. He's still waiting on the details.

"Should I be packing?" Clint asks.

"There was something peculiar in the report," Coulson says. "They requested that their lawyer find out where a certain dead nurse was buried. I sent a team out. Fresh dirt around the grave, casket empty except for some ashes. Traces of salt. Someone dug her up and then salted and burned her bones."

Clint grins. "Don't tell me you're being converted."

Coulson's eyes narrow a tiny fraction. "Your priority is still Nicaragua. We'll let the FBI continue to chase their tails."

Clint finally lets himself relax.

* * *

"You missed me looking pretty in my orange jumpsuit," Dean says once they finally have a moment to talk.

"I'll have to hack into the security footage. There's no way I'm going to pass that up."

"My ass did look pretty fantastic."

Clint rolls his eyes and then he pauses, because he's seen Shawshank Redemption. He knows prisons aren't exactly a great place to hang out at. "Were you okay?"

Dean laughs and Clint's not sure if that's supposed to be reassuring or not. "Of course I was. I owned those bitches. I'm incredible at poker. Sammy was such a spoilsport, insisted we breakout just when I was starting to have some fun."

"The FBI were going to arrest you."

"They've tried before and failed. I'm not too worried about them. It was better when they thought we were dead."

"My agency was worried about you guys. They were going to send me after you."

"Really?" Dean actually sounds pleased about that. "You should've taken the assignment. We could've gotten a real dinner together."

"Yeah, with you handcuffed to the table."

"Ooh, kinky," Deans says. "Just so you know, I'm a wait until the third date to bust out the handcuffs sort of guy."

"You don't seem like the guy who's ever made it to a third date," Clint says.

There's a long pause, and Clint wants to punch himself, because that was supposed to be a joke, and Dean's hesitated too long before firing a line back at him which means Clint's hit a nerve.

"I'm—"

"Don't you dare apologize," Dean says. "It's true. I travel a lot. I'm not looking for commitment. Plus, I can't exactly tell a person what I do for a living."

"You told me," Clint says

"Yeah," Dean says and his voice holds a rare softness. "I guess I did."


	5. Chapter 5

Warnings: Off-screen canon character death.

* * *

Dean: Almost got eaten by a djinn

Clint: Your life

Dean: Yeah

Clint: Something's wrong

Clint puts down the report he's been trying to muddle through, sightings of Barney, intel on the dictator, things for a mission he doesn't want to participate in, and calls Dean.

"What happened?" Clint asks as soon as Dean picks up.

"I got to see my life," Dean says. "What could've been my future. If things had been different. My family was happy. Sammy was a lawyer, he was going to get married, Mom was alive, and she couldn't have been more proud. Dad was dead, but he wasn't killed by demons so that's good at least."

"What about you?"

Dean pauses. "I was miserable."

"So not a good future then."

"It was for them."

"It's okay for you to be happy," Clint says. "It's not always about other people."

Dean laughs. "You don't actually believe that. Our jobs are all about other people."

"Dean—"

"I don't want to talk about this. The government got any shady plans for you?"

Clint thinks about the plans resting on his legs, the surveillance on Barney, and he thinks about not telling Dean. "We're tracking my brother."

Dean's silent for a moment. "Tracking tracking?"

"I have my orders," Clint says.

"Fuck orders. That's your brother! Family is what matters. You don't betray them for anything."

"You don't understand."

"My dad was possessed by the demon that killed my mother, and I could've ended everything, but I didn't, because he was my dad so don't tell me I don't understand. You can't do this, Clint."

"He's leading mass killings in Central America."

"You can save him," Dean says. "You always have the chance to save him, but if you kill him," Dean pauses, "if you kill someone then it's over. You've run out of options or you've given up on them."

"I'm not you," Clint says. "There are some things I can't forgive."

"That's not true, but I'm not going to tell you what to do, because then I'll be just like them. This is a decision you have to make for yourself. Forget about what I've told you, forget about your handler. Think about your brother and what you two have, and think about if you can really destroy that. I—"

All Clint hears is static, and he assumes Dean managed to stumble onto something supernatural.

Clint: I'll think about what you said. Good luck on your hunt.

Clint gathers up the pages of intel and puts them in a neat pile on his desk before changing into workout clothes. He's going to go for a long run and think about Barney.

* * *

Dean needs to make Clint understand. Dean's been down the following orders road, hell it's all he for most of his life. Dean scrambled to do anything John Winchester asked him to do, tried to anticipate what John wanted so he could follow orders before they were even issued.

"Think about your brother and what you two have," Dean urges, "and think about if you can really destroy that. I—"

Dean hears the familiar crunch of static and then his radio cuts out, and he forgets all about Clint. All he can think about is Sam. Sam who's gone to the diner to buy food, and Dean scrambles out of the car and rushes in, screaming Sam's name.

There are bodies littering the floor, but no sign of Sam. That's a positive, because as long as there's no body, Sam could be alive. Dean can hope, and that's all Dean needs. He pauses when he reaches the back of the diner, and sulfur fills his nostrils, thick almost suffocating, trying it's best to smother Dean's hope, but he doesn't let it.

He sprints back to the Impala and heads straight to Bobby's.

* * *

Dean can't stand the pity in Bobby's eyes so he forces him away. He hurls barbed insults that will stick and work their way under Bobby's thickest defenses until Bobby, with pity and defeat rising in his eyes, turns and walks away.

Dean collapses by Sam's still form and finally lets himself cry. He's let Sam down. He's let John down. The one rule he's lived his life by has been to keep Sam safe at all costs. He'd broken that rule once, when he'd slipped out of the motel for just a few minutes, and Sam had almost gotten killed by a shtriga.

Dean had redoubled his efforts after that, he been resolved that nothing would get by him and hurt his baby brother. And now he's failed. After 21 years, the yellow-eyed demon has finally won, and Dean had been as helpless to stop it as he'd been when the demon killed his mother.

He drops his head to Sam's hand, the limb stiff, off color, and starting to smell. Dean knows he needs to salt and burn the bones, but he can't even though a good hunter would. Dean's not a good hunter. A good hunter wouldn't let a demon and his games kill his brother. A good hunter wouldn't have let a demon escape and mess with people's lives for 20 years.

Dean doesn't understand why Sam has to be the one that's dead. What has Sam ever done wrong? Sam wanted to quit hunting and become a lawyer and raise a family and probably even have a stupid white picket fence. Dean's the failure, he's the one who can never get anything right. Why should he be the one to live, muddling through a screwed up life when Sam's the one who's always had the potential for so much more?

Dean's been pulled back from death twice now; first with the faith healer then with John's deal. Oh. Of course. Dean understands now why he was given a second and then a third chance. It's always been his job to protect Sam, and he can still do that now. He can make up for his mistakes. He can bring Sam back.

Dean gives Sam's lifeless hand a squeeze, and he races out to find a crossroads.

* * *

"I've been thinking about what you said," Clint says. It's the first time they've talked since Dean's phone cut out on them.

"About what I said?" Dean asks, his voice more distant than Clint's used to.

Clint dismisses it because it has been a while since they talked, and maybe Dean doesn't remember. "About Barney. About family. About my job."

"Right. I was out of place. I mean, I can't exactly throw stones, because I kill things for a living too, and sometimes they're people, but Clint," Dean's voice sounds strained, painful almost, "you can't tell yourself you're just following orders. In the end, you're the one pulling the trigger or letting the arrow go. You are the one killing them. You have to make sure your conscience is okay with that. You," Dean's voice falters, on the verge of breaking, "Hell's real, Clint."

Something's wrong. Something is very wrong. "Dean? What the hell happened after our call got cut out?"

There's a long pause, and Clint can hear Dean shifting. The slide of denim against a comforter, the scratch of nails across skin. Clint's holding his breath even though he knows he's not going to be prepared for what's coming. Dean's world is so completely different than his, full of monsters and demons and evil, and Clint's mind is spinning out worst case scenarios in every second that stretches between them.

"They got Sam," Dean says, his voice choked with emotion. "They got him under my watch, and I got there too late. I should've been there, and I wasn't. I should've been there to save him."

Clint's heart drops into his stomach. He doesn't know much about Sam except that Dean cares about him in a way he doesn't care about anything else. The dedication he gives to his work, he gives even more to his love for his brother, and sometimes Clint's a little jealous of Dean's ability to feel like that and still do his job, but right now he'd do anything for Dean not to have to feel the pain of that loss.

"But I wasn't," Dean says a hard edge to his voice now, speaking again before Clint can offer up words that will fall far short of comforting. "So now I have to pay for it."

"Pay for it?" Clint asks and his ears strain to hear any other sound in the room. He can hear Dean's breathing, frighteningly controlled, but there's no whisper of fingers against a knife blade, no cocking of a gun. He wants to know where Dean is. He wants to stop him before he does something stupid. Clint knows about loss. He knows that it can drive you to a dangerous edge, and he'll be damned if he lets Dean tumble off it.

"I brought him back. I was the one who let him down so it only makes sense that I have to give something up to bring him back."

Shit, Clint thinks. "You didn't."

"I made a deal," Dean says confirming Clint's fears. "It was the only way. I can't live without him."

"You selfish bastard." It's the first thing that comes to Clint's mind, and he should've censored himself, should've regretted the words, but he's too pissed to do either. Dean sold his soul to a freaking demon? Clint's free hand grabs a handful of his hair and pulls, letting the pain edge out the anger.

"Excuse me?" Dean's words are clipped with fury, no hint of desperation left in his voice.

"You. Selfish. Bastard." Clint draws out the words like he's talking to a small child.

"I saved his life!"

"Saved it for what? So that when you die he not only has to be upset that you're dead but that you're also in hell! And that you're suffering because of him?"

"It was my choice. There's no reason for him to feel guilty, and I saved his life so he could actually live it. What was I going to do with my life? Keeping hunting evil that multiplies faster than I can kill it? I'm tired of this life, but I'm not cut out for anything else. Sammy at least," Dean's voice wavers again. "He has dreams for the future. He can make them come true. He deserves that after all the shit he's been through."

"You don't think you deserve to live?"

Dean's silence speaks volumes.

"Damn it!" Clint shouts before he remembers that he's in SHIELD, and he needs to keep his voice down before someone rushes in to see what's wrong. "Damn you!"

"That's the general idea of selling your soul."

Clint wishes that they were together so he could wrap his hands around Dean's throat and squeeze the life out of him. "You cannot joke about this."

"Oh, look at you giving orders," Dean sneers. "I always make jokes and often at inappropriate times. I should change that now that I'm dying? Hell, I've always been dying. We're all always dying. At least now I know when my ticket's going to be punched."

"How long did you get?"

"A year." Dean's voice is softer than it was, fear starting to slip in around the anger. "I've got a year to make sure Sammy's going to be okay."

"Sam's not the only person who cares about you," Clint says before he can help it. He squeezes his eyes shut, because this was not a good time for confession, but he's so sick of Dean putting Sam first. He's sick of Dean thinking that he's undeserving of happiness or even life, and that somehow Sam can live for the both of them. That's not how it works.

Dean laughs but it's cold and empty. "I know. Bobby's already given me shit."

Clint should be happy that Dean's obviously missed the point of what Clint was trying to say, except it pisses him off. He's exposing his feelings, and Dean is completely oblivious.

"I'm not talking about Bobby."

There's a long pause.

"Oh," Dean says, a light exhalation of air, a tremulous whisper of realization.

Clint finds himself holding his breath again, because he's said too much. They're friends, friends who talk to unwind after a tough day, who joke about blowing things up, who confide their deepest secrets, and who have phone dinner dates, but just friends, and Clint's crossed a line.

"You weren't—this wasn't," Dean pauses and Clint's amazed that he's managed to render Dean speechless, because Dean always has a smart ass comment to everything. "Damn it!"

Clint's confused now. He isn't expecting a confession of love, because both of them are too damaged for that, but he'd been hoping for recognition maybe an 'I feel something too'. At worst he'd been expecting Dean to laugh it off. The anger surprises him.

"You can't do this to me," Dean says. "This wasn't supposed—you were the one person in my life who didn't depend on me. You can't change that up. Not now. Especially not now. Damn it!"

"I don't depend on you," Clint says feeling his anger surging up to meet Dean's. "It's called caring. You should try it sometime."

"I did and it's gotten me a one way ticket to eternal damnation. You weren't supposed to care. What the hell were you thinking?"

"What was I thinking? You're an idiot. I was thinking that I enjoy talking to you. I was thinking that I look forward to hearing your voice, to getting your texts. I was thinking about how refreshing it is to talk to someone and have them understand, not only the words but the silences. I was thinking that I'm a decent person so I don't want people I'm close to to die!"

"Really?" Dean demands, his voice clipped steel, sharp and biting. "Funny because I thought you killed people who were close to you."

Clint's mouth opens and closes a few times as emotions smother any words that try to escape his lips. "Fuck you," he finally says and snaps his phone shut. Normally he'd follow that up with a 'I hope you burn in hell,' but he doesn't need to hope. He knows.

He's not sure whether he wants to twist his phone into mangled pieces or call Dean back and apologize. He settles for jamming his phone into the pocket and striding out of the room and down the hall to Coulson's office.

"Agent Barton," Coulson says covering his shock with a readymade smile. "Is everything all right?"

Clint smiles and pushes all thoughts of Dean Winchester out of his head. "I'm ready to move in on Barney."

Coulson's facial expression doesn't change. "I'm glad to know that you're prepared to do what we ask, but we're not at that stage yet."

"I have a plan." Clint's hands curl around the edge of Coulson's desk until his knuckles turn white. So what if he kills anyone who has been close to him? It keeps him from getting hurt or making stupid decisions based on feelings.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but that's not your job," Coulson says.

"Fine." Clint pushes off the desk. "When civil war breaks out in Nicaragua, all those deaths will be on your conscience." He pauses halfway out the door and turns around to salute Coulson. "Sir."

He storms out, missing the worry that wrinkles Coulson's forehead.

* * *

"You all right?" Sam asks as Dean shrugs into his jacket. Dean throws him a 'don't start this shit again' look and Sam shakes his head. "I'm not talking about that. I mean, you've been going out every night, coming back smelling like alcohol and sex. That isn't like you."

"Of course it's like me," Dean says touching his necklace briefly before checking his appearance in the mirror.

"Not lately. You don't drink as much anymore, and you flirt with girls, but you haven't done anything serious in ages."

Dean shrugs. "That's what I've got porn for."

"You canceled your subscription. You just leave the screen open so I think you're watching. I'm not stupid, Dean."

"Just damn nosy." Dean rubs the back of his neck. "Look, I'm a dead man walking. In a year, it's going to be hellfire for the rest of eternity so I'm going to enjoy my remaining time. You have a problem with that?"

Dean walks out without waiting for an answer. He doesn't want to think about why his habits had changed. He doesn't want to think about the heavy weight of his phone in his pocket, how easy it would be to flip it open and shoot off a text. Even easier to make a phone call, but he doesn't do either.

He's tired of being responsible, of feeling like he owes something to everyone. He can't give Clint want he wants, because Sam comes first. Sam always comes first, even before Dean himself, and Dean can't change that. Even if he wasn't bound for hell at the end of a year, it wouldn't matter, because something else would come up, and Dean would sacrifice himself, and Clint would be upset.

It's better this way. The more Clint hates him, the easier it'll be when Dean's gone.

* * *

Two days after Clint walked out of Coulson's office, he goes to find Agent Walker. He's worked with Walker on several cases, and he happens to know that Walker has a personal issue with Barney. Barney had screwed up one of Walker's missions, and a kid had gotten caught in the crossfire. Five year old girl. Died in Walker's arms. That's the kind of thing that haunts you, that latches on and never lets go. It's the kind of thing that grudges are born out of.

Clint raps his knuckles on Walker's open door and leans lazily against the doorjamb.

Walker flicks his eyes up. "You're Coulson's."

"I'm SHIELD's."

Walker puts his pen down as he realizes that something's off. "We're all SHIELD's."

"SHIELD wants Barney taken down, and I think Coulson's moving too slow."

"Shut the door."

Clint grins as he closes the door and sits down across from Walker.

* * *

Dean looks over at Sam, hunched over yet another book that's bound to be a dead end, and something squeezes Dean's chest. It rips the air out of his lungs, and he panics for a brief moment, wondering if he's going to die before his year is up, and wouldn't that be freaking perfect.

The moment passes, and Dean's left with a need to open his mouth and tell Sam that he's sorry for making the deal, that he's sorry he's going to leave Sam alone to face the world because Dean hadn't been strong enough to do it himself. But most of all, he wants to tell Sam that he loves him.

He doesn't, though, because their relationship isn't like that. Dean knows that Sam probably wants to hear him say it, has probably wanted to hear him say it since he was a boy, but Dean can't let those three words escape. Certainly not now. It will be an admission of defeat, and Dean's not ready to give up yet.

"It's going to be okay," Dean says instead, because this is their relationship. Dean identifies potential threats and he takes care of them. He protects Sam.

Sam looks up from the book, his eyes tired, his bangs sweeping across his forehead. He shakes his head. "I'm not sure that it will be."

Dean has nothing to say to that so they return to sitting in silence.

* * *

Clint stands to Walker's right and a half step behind him as they face Fury. Coulson is to the left of them, also facing Fury, but he's standing alone, without a fellow agent to back him up.

"It's a delicate situation," Coulson says. "We can't afford to mess this up or thousands of innocent people die."

"I trust my agent," Walker says reaching back to lay a hand on Clint's shoulder. "I'm confident he can pull this off. He's not going in as a SHIELD agent, he's going in as Barney's brother. Barney is the key to this operation. Once he's no longer in charge of security then we won't even need to target Carguello. His rivals will take him out for us."

"It's too risky. We'll be needlessly endangering Agent Barton's life."

Fury looks from one agent to the other. "We've been waiting on this for too long. We have an opening. We're going to take it."

Clint keeps his face impassive, and tries to pretend that he doesn't see the betrayal in the brief moment his eyes meet Coulson's. If there's anything Clint has learned from Dean Winchester, it's that family is weakness, and Clint can't afford weakness. He doesn't care how Coulson feels right now. Clint needed orders to kill Barney and if Coulson wasn't willing to give them, well Clint had found someone who was.

* * *

Dean can't believe this. They're hunting Santa Claus? Well, the evil twin brother of Santa Claus, but still. Only his life is this strange.

He pulls out his phone, because he knows Clint will get a kick out of this. Evil Santa snatching people up chimneys.

He's halfway through typing the message when he remembers that he and Clint don't do things like this anymore. They haven't talked since their fight, and Dean knows that he's the one who has to initiate if they're going to make up, but he can't bring himself to do it. His days are numbered, and he's not going to apologize just so that he can die.

It takes more effort than he'd like to admit to slip his phone back into his pocket. He misses having someone to joke with, because Sam would rather be serious and talk about feelings than share a few light hearted laughs, and lately when Dean dreams about the life he could've had, Lisa and Ben don't feature prominently anymore. Instead, there's an archery range.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: This story won't be updated for 7-10 days, because I'm going to be without internet, but I promise I'm not abandoning it. My favorite part is still coming up :)

Warnings: Minor character death, angst

* * *

Clint has nothing but the clothes he's wearing with him as he walks up to the large iron gates. He has no weapons, no tracking chips, no comm. link, nothing. He's going in blind, defenseless, and if anything goes wrong no one will know about it until it's too late to help him.

He should be frightened, but he's strangely calm. It should probably worry him. It definitely worried Coulson who tried, yet again, to talk him out of this, but Coulson doesn't understand. There's no one else who can do this. This is Clint's responsibility, and maybe he'd doubted that for a few moments, but he doesn't believe in the man who cautioned him against this anymore.

Clint presses the buzzer. It's in a gray box complete with a number pad and a video screen. A face Clint recognizes from the files pops up. He's a lower guard in Barney's security detail.

"Identify yourself and your purpose."

Clint knows there are at least three machine guns trained on him as well as four snipers, and there's a copter on its way. He smiles and presses down the respond button. "Clint Barton here to see Barney Barton."

"There's no Barney Barton here," the guard says. "You have one minute to leave before you are escorted off the property."

"I'm not on the property yet. There's a giant locked gate in my way."

The guard's unamused face flickers and then the channel is changed and Clint is looking at his brother for the first time in years.

"There's that sense of humor I've missed," Barney says. "Though this boldness is new. Where'd you pick that up?"

Clint smiles because it keeps the fear, the anger, and the memories at bay. He's here to do a job. "Aren't you going to let me in? I know the circus didn't teach us proper manners, but now that you've risen in the world, I thought you would've picked a few up."

Barney grins, flashing a smile that's almost the same one Clint remembers from their time as boys, but there's too much teeth and a sharp edge to his lips that speak to the terrible things Barney has done since Clint last saw him smile like that.

"My apologies, dear brother. I'll send an escort down right away."

* * *

Dean rubs his thumb over his phone, and his fingers scream at him to flip it open, to make the call. He shouldn't have talked to Ruby about hell. Of course hell was going to be bad, it was freaking hell, but the thought of him becoming a demon? That was worse than anything he'd imagined. One day he might be hunted, maybe even by Sam.

Dean's hands are shaking as he opens his phone and he has to hold his phone still in one hand as he texts with the other.

Dean: I'm scared.

It's a confession and an apology rolled into one, and Dean's not sure whether he wants a response or not. He shouldn't have sent it. It was a moment of weakness, and if Clint responds then Dean's going to break down. He's going to admit that he's scared out of his mind, that he thinks that he might have made a mistake, that whenever he regrets making the deal he's almost drowned in guilt for thinking that his life is more important than Sam's, and he's so confused that he doesn't know what to think anymore.

He needs to talk to someone removed from this, who can tell him the truth. He needs, even for a brief moment, to believe that everything is going to be okay, but he can't ask Sam to lie to him because that will break him.

Dean's shoulders shake as he fights the tears welling up in his eyes. He opens his phone again.

Dean: Tell me it wasn't a mistake

Dean: Tell me it was

Dean: Tell me something, anything, and I'll believe it

* * *

Clint lets one of the security beefcakes manhandle him down the front lawn and into the room where Barney is waiting. He knows that the man's fingers are going to leave bruises, but Clint doesn't dare fight back. He can't risk dying until he mission is complete.

Barney is wearing an all black suit with a crisp white dress shirt underneath it, and Clint rolls his eyes.

"Does your boss know you dress like you're in the FBI? I doubt he'd like that too much."

Barney laughs and pulls a trick handkerchief out of his suit pocket. It's like the ones the circus magicians used in their routines, colored and impossibly long. "I gave it my own personal touch, but I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing."

Clint smiles and shakes his arm free of the goon. "I would hate him to kill you before I got a chance to."

Immediately Clint's arms are wrenched behind his back and there is a knife pressed against his throat and someone else has a gun pressed to his temple.

"Threats?" Barney asks making a tsking noise. "You're not in a position to be doing that."

The knife presses harder and Clint can feel it slide into his skin, not enough to do serious damage but enough to make a point.

"Consider it a challenge," Clint says.

He watches in satisfaction as Barney motions for his men to stand down. Barney's never been able to turn down a competition between them. The circus had been full of ample opportunities. They would compete on the tightrope, the unicycle, acrobatics, the stupid games, anything and everything to find out who was the best.

"A challenge?" Barney asks and Clint knows he's got him when his eyebrows dip up for a fraction of a second.

"Get your boss, and we'll talk."

Barney shakes his head. "Nice try but no. I know who you work for."

"I work for myself." Clint laces his fingers and presses his hands to the back of his head. "Frisk me. I'm clean. I'm not here to gank your boss."

"Gank?" Barney wrinkles his nose.

Clint ignores the memories that word wants to drag up. He can't afford to be distracted right now.

"I heard you had a visitor," a deeply accented voice says from behind Clint. There's a flash of surprise then irritation on Barney's face, and Clint tries not to smile. He loves it when his plans actually go the way they're supposed to.

Clint turns around and waves at the man in front of him. His eyebrows are a thick, unmoving line that overshadow his eyes, brown and sunk deep into his skull. The man—Carguello, Clint knows him from the pictures—doesn't look as severe as Clint had expected. He looks amused which either means Clint's about to be dead or he's going to be given one chance to prove why he should live.

"Prospective replacement, actually," Clint says. "I would reach out and shake your hand when I introduce myself, but I'm afraid your bodyguards would probably shoot me for that."

"Replacement?" Carguello asks. He chuckles. "You think you can replace Barney? He's the best in this hemisphere."

"Only because I never applied." Clint ups his smile. "I'm not sure how fast news gets to you, but I offed our mentor recently. Pathetic how easy that was, and now I'm looking for a real challenge."

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint can see Barney's fingers start to curl into fists. Definitely struck a nerve there. Good. Clint hasn't seen Barney in a while, and he needs to brush up on his brother's weaknesses if he wants to win this fight.

"I have a proposal for you," Clint says. "Barney and I will fight to the death. If I win, you get the better brother as your head of security. If he wins, then nothing changes. Either way, you'll get some good entertainment out of it."

"This is a trap," Barney says. "He's working with the Americans."

Clint laughs. "I quit them. They got in the way of my fun, but you, dear brother, sound scared. Want them to kill me on the spot so I can't kick your ass?"

Barney's hands fist at his sides. "Like you ever did."

Clint's smile is almost genuine. Getting him riled up is almost too easy to be fun. "Then prove it. Neither of us holding back, neither of us afraid to hurt the other. We fight until one of us is dead."

Barney's lips twitch when he realizes he's been set up. "What happened to you?"

Clint shrugs. "I met somebody."

For the first time since Clint's seen Barney today, Barney looks frightened. Clint's lips peel back into a smile that is far from comforting.

* * *

Dean looks down at his phone. He's been checking it every minute even though his phone's on vibrate, and he's still not gotten an answer.

"You expecting a call?" Sam asks glancing away from the steering wheel.

"Guess not." Dean shoves his phone into his pocket.

Sam pulls into the bar, and Dean gets out of the car as fast as he can. He hates witches, and he hates Ruby, and he really hates that Ruby saved his life. He needs to get blackout drunk as fast as possible.

He's halfway to the bar when he jogs back to his car and tosses his phone into the Impala. It's not like he's going to need it.

* * *

Clint stretches his legs and looks across the room at Barney. He's stretching as well and trying not to obviously stare at Clint, but Clint grins when he catches him looking. He even gives a little wave.

"You're awfully cheerful for someone about to go to their death," Barney says.

"You're stalling," Clint says. He feels the pulls in his left hamstring and moves to stretch the right. "You always stall when you're afraid."

"And you always talk a big game." Barney takes a few experimental thrusts with his knife. He tosses it up and catches it, testing its weight. "You've never been good at following through though. Remember the time with the darts? I kicked your ass."

Clint turns over his knife. It's not one he's familiar with, but he'll learn quickly enough. "This isn't darts, and I used to throw the games when we were younger. You would pout and whine and be useless for days if you didn't win every once in a while."

Clint's lying but there's a flash of doubt on Barney's eyes and that's what he'd been aiming for. Barney's always had an inferiority complex, has always resented that Clint was the one who was chosen first, and Clint is going to exploit that.

"You know," Clint says bringing his arms up over his head so he could stretch. "I have a friend who's going to hell for his brother in a couple months."

"You have a friend?" Barney flashes Clint a smile as if they're boys teasing each other instead of gearing up for a fight to the death. "Shocking."

"I know, but he's taught me something very useful. Family is a liability. It's weakness, and I can't afford weakness."

"Look at you so callous. What are you going to when I'm gone? You'll be alone in the world, Clint. No Trick, no brother, and no friend. Maybe you didn't come here to kill me. Maybe you came here to die."

Clint tries to laugh off the words, but they pierce his defenses. Could Barney be right? Is that why Clint's here today? Does he really just want it all to be over?

No.

Clint's here to take out Carguello's head of security. He's playing the brother vs. brother card to get him in position to kill Barney without attracting suspicion or getting himself killed by Carguello's men. This isn't really about family, this is about Clint's job.

"It's understandable," Barney continues. "Your friend is going to hell, and you're going to miss him. Tell you what, you kneel and I'll make your death quick and painless, and you can wait for him to join you in the pit."

"He might be crazy enough to volunteer for hell, but I'm not." Clint can feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, making him restless, demand that he stop talking and fight.

"Crazy? He loves his brother. How is that crazy?" Barney opens his arms. "Give me a hug, Clint, and I'll love you, and you can forget all about this."

"You'd stab me," Clint says, "I'm not stupid. Besides, we're past that point. You're a killer."

"So are you. You just don't like who I kill for."

Clint shrugs. "Maybe this is payback."

"Payback?"

"You replaced me as Trick's accomplice. Now I'm going to replace you."

"You quit," Barney says. "Or don't you remember? Here, let me refresh your memory. You and Trick abandoned me at the circus and went to do your own thing. You didn't feel guilty about it until you shot me that night at the break-in."

"I was supporting us. We were barely scraping by at the circus. Trick gave me a job. I sent the money back to you and cards. Once we had enough saved up I was going to leave him, and we were going to live together, but you got tired of waiting and started doing your own thing. You joined Trick to spite me."

"Because it's all about you." Barney rolls his eyes. "I'm your older brother, Clint. It's my job to take care of you. I should've been at Trick's side from the beginning, not you. I should've been risking my life and sending envelopes of cash home. When you quit, it was my chance to take care of you, and you left me. Again. That's all you ever do. Leave."

Clint shakes his head. "It's not your job to take care of me. It's my job to take care of me. Depending on someone else makes you weak. So does protecting someone else. You can only be strong when you're on your own."

"I grow weary of this," Carguello says and both brothers startle having forgotten they aren't alone. "If you had wanted a family reunion, you should've planned a barbeque. I'm here to see who my head of security is going to be."

"Of course," Clint says. He glances over at Barney. His brother is taking off his shoes. Clint rolls his shoulders and tugs his socks off before going to the center of the room to wait. "Care to make any bets on the outcome?"

Carguello is unamused. "I will kill you both if you continue to waste my time."

"Hey, I'm ready," Clint says. He bounces on his toes to make sure his muscles are still limber. "It's Barney who's holding this thing up."

Barney, now barefoot, joins Clint in the middle of the room. "You're in an awful rush for someone who's about to die."

"I don't plan on dying." Clint crouches down, his knife held out in his left hand.

"You're not left handed," Barney says.

Clint grins and lunges forward, grabbing Barney's arm with his right hand and twisting it behind his back. He drives Barney to the ground, and he stabs at his brother, but Barney throws him off and the knife only grazes Barney's arm.

Clint tosses his knife to his right hand. "I drew first blood, and I withstood making a _Princess Bride_ reference. You should just forfeit now."

Barney wipes the thin trickle of blood off his arm, and he charges. Clint easily steps out of the way, but Barney recovers faster than Clint had expected, and he has to roll out of the way of Barney's next attack. Clint springs to his feet unharmed, but he'd used more energy than he'd wanted to.

He holds his knife out in front of him as a deterrent, and circles his brother, searching for a weakness. Barney fakes left and sells it well enough that Clint barely has time to jump back. Barney's knife scrapes across Clint's chest, drawing a line of blood.

"Fooled you," Barney says.

"Not completely." Clint dives at Barney's feet, his knife catching Barney's calf as he rolls by. He would've liked to hamstring him, but Clint doesn't always get what he wants.

"This is going to be a slow death," Clint says. "These are pretty small knives."

"I'm not afraid of dying."

Liar, Clint thinks. He grins. "You should be. Hell's real."

"Right, it's coming for your buddy." Barney has a small limp from the calf wound, not enough to throw him completely off his game but enough that Clint should be able to exploit it. "Guess you weren't worth enough to him to live for."

Clint grips his knife tighter and tries to ignore Barney's words. He needs to focus on the mission. He can't afford to be distracted. This is why Clint likes sniper work. All he has to do is find his target and fire. This up close and personal work is dirty and there are too many variables.

"Struck a nerve there, did I?" Barney's lips peel back into a harsh smile. "Tut, tut, brother. You've grown soft Carguello would never allow you to be his second in command."

"He let you, and you've always been second choice when I'm around." Clint starts inching closer to Barney's left side. He'll approach, quick, and force Barney to jump back by putting his weight on his right leg. His weak leg. "Trick only took you on because I quit."

Clint jumps in, and Barney tries to leap back, but his right leg buckles so he falls more than he leaps, and Clint slashes deep into Barney's arm. Barney curses as he falls to the ground, and he quickly rolls out of the way of Clint's next attack.

Barney kicks his legs, catching Clint's feet and sends Clint to the ground as well. Clint has to let his knife go to catch himself, and as he scrambles to pick it back up, Barney's hands close around Clint's ankle and pulls.

Clint kicks at his face with his free leg and hears the crunch of bone as his heel collides with Barney's nose. He makes another move towards his knife, but Barney leaps on his back, pinning him to the ground.

Clint flips over and Barney's hands wrap around his neck, pressing down into Clint's skin, hard enough that they choke off his air supply. Clint gasps as blood from Barney's broken nose drips down onto Clint's chin.

He thrashes, searching for a way to throw Barney off. Barney's left hand is weaker than it should be, and Clint remembers the knife wound. His vision is going grey as Clint digs his fingers into the gash in Barney's arm.

Barney howls and his grip slackens, and Clint throws Barney off of him and into the ground. Clint grabs a handful of Barney's hair and slams his face into the floor. The blood is going to be a bitch to get out. Since Clint's planning on torching the place he's not too worried about it.

Clint presses Barney's face into the floor. "I'm going to go get my knife. Be a good boy and don't move while I'm gone."

Clint kicks Barney's knife across the floor and scoops up his own. When he turns around, Barney is standing unsteadily on his feet.

Clint tsks. "I thought I told you to stay still?"

"Not going to lie there while you kill me." Barney wipes away the blood that's flowing from his nose into his mouth.

"You have a different position you'd like to die in? I'm feeling generous so feel free to make a request."

Barney reaches into the waistline of his jeans, and he's throwing a knife at Clint before Clint has time to react. The knife bites into Clint's shoulder, and Clint jerks back on the impact.

"I'm not the one dying today," Barney says.

Clint grits his teeth and yanks the knife out. "Not only do you suck at darts but you suck at throwing knives too. You missed."

Clint hurls the knife back and it lodges in Barney's thigh.

Barney groans as he sinks to his knees. "You missed too."

Clint switches his knife to his left hand. "No I didn't. I meant to hit you there. If I wanted to kill you impersonally I would've shot you from a couple hundred yards away. I plan on feeling your last breath leave your body."

Barney rips the knife out of his leg. "You shouldn't have given this back to me."

"This wouldn't be fun if there wasn't a hint of danger."

Clint is cautious as he circles Barney, watching his wrist and his shoulder, making sure that he isn't going to catch Clint off guard if he decides to throw the knife.

"This is fun for you?" Barney's nose is crooked, his has blood on his face, trailing down his thigh, and he's shaking his head. "You're fucking insane."

Clint can't argue with that, but he can't let himself distracted. He's still circling Barney, trying to figure out how to get closer without getting hit by Barney throwing the knife at him. Barney was right, Clint shouldn't have throw the knife back. If Clint moves in then Barney will throw the knife, and Clint won't have enough time to react.

Clint needs to make his move soon. His right arm is starting to ache, and the blood hasn't stopped flowing yet. He needs to end this before he ends up at a disadvantage he can't come back from.

Clint's eyes scan Barney for a weakness, for an opening, for an idea, and then it comes to him. Barney wanted insane? Clint will show him insane.

Clint lines up his shot and takes it, hurling his knife through the air. He's moving as soon as he throws the knife, and it pierces Barney's throwing arm before Barney can throw his knife back at Clint, and Clint is on him in a second. He pulls the knife out of Barney's arm and leans in close.

"I didn't come for you," Clint whispers. "I came for Carguello. You were a nice bonus."

"Clint," Barney whispers.

_In the end, you're the one pulling the trigger or letting the arrow go. You are the one killing them. You have to make sure your conscience is okay with that._

Clint has the newspaper clippings from everything Barney's been behind. He has records of Barney's kill counts, every person he's been given credit for killing either directly or indirectly. Barney's been captured twice, given two second chances and his kill counts had been higher after he got out. He's not going to change.

"Goodbye."

Clint plunges the knife into Barney's heart.

_Hell's real, Clint._

* * *

Clint: I killed my brother

Dean: How do you feel?

Clint: Like shit

Dean: I'm dying for mine and I feel the same way

Clint: There's not winning is there?

Dean: Nope


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Thank you everyone for your patience and your reviews! I'm back to the land of internet and back to my regular posting schedule. Also, I am not an expert on explosives or deafness so I apologize for any inaccuracies there. And everything I know about this particular incident in Budapest I learned from Wikipedia so accuracy there depends on your faith in Wikipedia.

ShoshonaThe Rose: Yes, the rest of the Avengers will eventually make it into the story, and the phone call doesn't quite go the way you predicted, but don't worry, there's plenty of heartbreaking angst surrounding it.

Warnings: Major character death (canon compliant)

* * *

Clint's on a particularly tricky mission that involves explosives. He's not used to the types of bombs they're using because they're modeled off a terrorist cell's, but they're trying to make this hit look like it'd been the terrorists who'd done it, so Clint's playing with new toys.

He doesn't mind, too grateful that he's been let back into the field. Coulson thought he needed time off, because he'd taken out Trick Shot and Barney in such quick succession, but Clint convinced Fury otherwise, and now he's working with Smithfield, because Smithfield is in charge of the Azerbaijan situation, and Coulson is still putting up a fuss about Clint being back to work so soon.

Clint knows the drill by heart. He's supposed to rig the explosives when he gets the signal from Shepard and then run. They're setting off five separate blasts along this road, and Clint's is important for distraction. It's Harris's bomb that's going to hit the target.

"Time for some fun," Shepard says over the comm.

Clint grins and starts fiddling with the bomb to get the countdown started. His cell phone rings as the numbers start to countdown from 2:00. He pauses because he'd brought his phone as a distant hope, not because he thought he'd use it. Only one person has the number on this phone, and they know only to call if it's an extreme emergency.

1:56

Clint flips his phone open. "Dean?" He tries not to sound panicked, but he is. He and Dean have spoken sparingly since Barney's death, both dancing around each other, not wanting to fight again, but not really knowing what to say. The fact that Dean is calling him without checking first, when he knows that Clint is on a mission, is bad.

"Clint?" Dean sounds terrified and his voice trembles like he's on the verge of tears.

1:52

"I'm here. What's up?" Clint tries to sound casual as if he's not in the middle of the desert, like they're friends chatting about some mundane aspect of their lives, but neither of them have the luxury of mundane moments.

"I can hear them coming for me," Dean chokes out. "They're barking, and they're getting closer, and I really thought I was going to get out of this. I thought—"

Clint hears him swallow back a sob, and his heart stutters. This is it. The recordings Dean had made for Clint had information on Hellhounds, about the monstrous creatures that come for those who've bargained and literally drag them to hell. Clint tries to push back his own fear, because whatever he's feeling, Dean must be feeling ten times worse, and Clint can't let him do this alone.

"I know," Clint says. "I'm here. I'll be here the whole time."

Dean takes several shaky breaths. "You were right. I'm a selfish son of a bitch."

"I'm sure your mother was a lovely person," Clint chokes on his attempted laugh. "You shouldn't talk about her like that."

1: 45

"She was incredible. I should've told you this earlier. Or maybe I shouldn't tell you at all, but I'm down to my last few minutes on Earth, and I'm already going to hell so I might as well be a selfish dick."

"Barton, what the hell are you doing?" Shepard shouts through the comm. "Move your ass!"

Clint rips his earpiece out and tosses it to the ground. Dean's about to tell him something important, and he's not going to miss it.

"You're important to me," Dean says. "You weren't supposed to be, I mean you almost got me killed so I should've kicked your ass and walked away, but—" Dean pauses and Clint can hear deranged barking through the phone. "oh shit," Dean says, "they're here. Shit! Wait. I love you. Dick move to say now, but you deserve to know. That dinner date we had—it was—"

Clint hears the tearing of fabric, Dean screaming and then a loud smack as the phone hits something, presumably the floor. The growling of the dogs is louder, and he can hear claws ripping through skin, the drag of a body. Dean's screams mix with someone elses's—Sam?—and a woman is laughing.

Suddenly the screams are gone. Clint pulls his phone away from his ear and stares at it for a long moment. Dean's gone. For real this time. Dragged to hell. And yet. He said that he loved him. Clint should've said something back. He should've given him something positive to take to hell with him. He should've done something besides just stand here.

1:01

Clint spots the red numbers and swears spill from his mouth. He's going to get himself blown up if he doesn't hurry. He can think about this later. Shit. He jams his phone into his vest and starts running.

He knows he's not going to make it. There was a reason the timer was set for two minutes. He needed time to get away from the reach of the blast. He's only given himself a minute. He forces his legs to move faster, his arms to pump harder.

His heart is pounding in his chest, sweat is dripping down his face, and his whole body is tense waiting for the explosion.

It still catches him off guard. There is a deafening sound and he's swept off his feet then slammed into the ground, and everything goes dark.

* * *

"I can do it," Clint insists, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No you can't," Coulson says.

Clint turns his full glare on the agent. "Are you discriminating against me for my disability? Because I'm positive that's against SHIELD policy."

Coulson takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he's a professional. He knows that Agent Barton hates rest between missions, but he needs to take a break. Two incredibly personal missions should've been enough to bench him at least until he'd had some psych evals done, but now he'd gotten himself injured on what should've been a straightforward mission.

"You're still getting used to your hearing aids," Coulson says, "and you haven't finished rehabbing your arm. Your physical therapist says another three weeks at least."

When Clint had woken up from the explosion he'd been in the hospital, and his skin felt tight like a bad sunburn, and any small movement hurt. His skin was too sensitive to touch anything, and his muscles were sore like he had a bad case of the flu. Coulson had been there, though, sitting at his bedside waiting for him to wake up.

He didn't scold Clint for going off on a mission Coulson warned him against, didn't ask him what went wrong with the bomb, just looked at him and said 'are you okay'. Only, Clint didn't hear the words so much as see them. And when Clint answered his voice sounded weird, like he was underwater and listening to people talk above him.

He remembers the first bite of panic, how his chest constricted, and the machines started beeping rapidly. He remembers Coulson reaching out a hand and touching one of the few places Clint hadn't been burned by the explosion. His touch had been comforting, grounding, and Clint knew he hadn't deserved that.

The memory doesn't stop him from fighting with Coulson now though. Clint doesn't like sitting still, and he hates being on medical leave. He doesn't want to sit around his apartment thinking about Dean, replaying their last conversation, dreaming about what their live could've been like if things had worked out differently. He doesn't want to spend his days staring at his cell phone, waiting for it to light up and for Dean to say 'hey guess what, I came back from the dead again'.

He needs to move so he can forget. He needs something to focus on, and he's found the perfect mission.

"She's only saying that because she wants you to sleep with her," Clint says. "I want to go to Budapest. It has the Widow's MO written all over it. I bet she seduced Gyurcsány, stole his speech, and published it to rile things up. She's still there, and I can get her."

"Absolutely not. You're on limited activity and even if you weren't, I wouldn't send you after the Black Widow on your first mission after a serious change to your routine."

"A serious change to my routine?" Clint rolls his eyes. "I'm partially deaf. It's okay, you can say it."

There's a knock at Coulson's door, Coulson's glad for the excuse to put a momentary end to this fight. "Come in."

Fury enters and if he seems surprised that Clint is there, he doesn't show it. "How are the hearing aids working?"

"Just fine, sir. I can even adjust them to pick up things I couldn't before."

Fury nods. "I'll pass your thanks on to Tony Stark. Having you been hitting the range?"

"Yes sir. I'm recovered."

"No you're not," Coulson says. "Don't lie to the director."

Fury looks between the two of them as they glare at each other, trying to figure out which one to believe. "Barton, I want a full physical assessment. If you're feeling as good as you claim, we're going to need you."

"Mission?" Clint asks perking up.

"We need our best on this one," Fury says. "Go report to Dr. Ledah. She's expecting you."

Coulson waits until Clint's left and shut the door behind him to protest. "You can't bring Barton to Budapest."

"We need our best," Fury repeats, "and Barton's the best."

"He's broken."

"Then you fix him. If he passes the tests, we're flying out tomorrow. A recording of the Prime Minister was just released where he admitted that not only had his party lied to win the election but that they'd done nothing useful in the four years they've been governing for. Chaos is going to break out, and the Widow will stay to watch some of it, but our window to catch her is going to be small."

* * *

Clint listens to the file on the fight to Budapest. He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at Coulson's disapproving frown and works on committing everything to memory. She's been raised by the Russians to be a femme fatale, and she's the best in the business.

She's more than that though. She's also an assassin, a well-trained one if her body count is anything to go by. Clint listens to lists of her victims, and he wonders how a woman like her is made. The file obligingly goes into detail about the "Red Room", a rumored facility where orphaned Russian children are molded into killers.

Everyone's heard of the Red Room, part of the anti-Soviet propaganda that's so popular in US government agencies, but he'd thought it was just that. Propaganda. A tall tale told to keep US agents in line. "You think our training is tough? Be glad you didn't have to train in the Red Room". He's heard everything from it's a torture chamber to they actually have brainwashing machines, and he doesn't think he believes any of it.

Besides, it doesn't matter what her background is. All that matters is that he's been given orders to kill her, and SHIELD is trusting him to follow through. _If you kill someone then it's over._ He takes a deep breath and pushes the voice of a dead friend from his mind. Dean's philosophy on life had gotten him killed, and Clint has plans for living for a nice long time.

Why?

He shoves the question aside. Why does anyone live? Because they're alive. Because they have to. Because they're proving to the world that they're strong enough to keep breathing no matter how shitty life gets. Death is admitting defeat, and Clint isn't done fighting.

* * *

There is chaos in the streets when Clint gets to Budapest. The peaceful protests are no longer peaceful and the riot police have dispersed in to the crowds with tear gas and a water cannon. He flinches as some of the crowd, ones who weren't protesting get hit. Several people run back. Others surge forward, determined to meet this attack with one of their own.

He's turning away when he spots a child getting trampled by the crowd. He's going to jump off his perch when he sees someone scoop the child up and run with her. The woman tucks the child to her chest and shoves her way through the crowd, unafraid to knock people to the ground when they get in her way.

Her movements are efficient and have signs of some kind of training. Clint tracks her movement, and her headscarf is ripped free by someone in the crowd. Red hair tumbles out, and Clint's breath catches in his throat.

No.

It can't be this easy. Can it?

He grabs his binoculars. He's found the Black Widow, and she's moving out of a crowd and into open space where he can easily hit her. No one will even think anything of it now that the police and the rioters are fully engaged.

He picks his bow up and remembers that she has a child in her arms. He decides the psychological trauma to the child is worth the Black Widow being eliminated. He nocks an arrow.

He's pulling the string back when he realizes that she's holding a little girl. A little girl she rescued from what would've been an extremely painful death. His grip loosens. She'd saved this girl's life.

But how many others had she cost? He pulls the string back to his ear. He has a clear shot. He should take it.

_If you kill someone then it's over. You've run out of options or you've given up on them_. He has options right now. He doesn't have to kill her. But he has his orders. But she just saved a little girl.

If he doesn't shoot soon he's going to lose her. She's going to disappear behind that building and then he's going to have to track her. All he has to do is let go, and he'll hit her. He'll have taken down one of the greatest threats to the free world.

_If you kill someone then it's over._

_In the end, you're the one pulling the trigger or letting the arrow go. You are the one killing them. You have to make sure your conscience is okay with that._

Now is not the time for Clint to start questioning orders. After he kills her, sure, but right now? Right now he could secure his place as greatest agent in the history of the world. Why is he hesitating?

_Hell's real_.

Damn it. Clint returns his arrow and straps his bow to his back. He can't kill her right now. She's holding an innocent child, and maybe the rumors are true about the Red Room. Maybe she's been trained to do this. Maybe she can be trained to stop. He can't kill her until he tries.

_If you kill someone then it's over. You've run out of options or you've given up on them._

Clint digs his earpiece out and tosses it onto the roof the building he's one. He stomps on it with his heel and starts moving. A few roof jumps and he's caught up with the Widow. She's turned down an alley with the girl, but he's not being very quiet, and she turns up to look at him, her free hand reaching for her gun.

Clint holds up his hands in the universal surrender sign. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You're just stalking me," she says pulling her gun out.

"I was going to kill you, but I've reconsidered. The people I work with haven't so you might not want to stand still."

With one hand, Natasha tucks the girl's head into her shoulder so she can't see what's going on. With her other, Natasha points her gun at Clint. "Why should I trust you?"

"If I wanted you dead you wouldn't have made it out of the crowd."

She considers this and lowers her gun. "I prefer to talk face to face."

Clint grins and climbs down the side of the building. He lands about ten feet in front of her, and he approaches but gives her enough space to feel comfortable. "This isn't a good place for us to talk."

Natasha unwinds the girl from her body and puts her on the ground. "Can you get home from here?"

The girl nods and gives Natasha's hand a squeeze before running off.

Clint watches her go. "She was your best insurance of not getting killed. Our guys hesitate before shooting children."

Natasha shrugs. "Aren't you worried that defecting will get you killed?"

"Who said anything about defecting? I want you to join my side."

Natasha raises an eyebrow. "You're crazy."

Clint grins. "You have no idea. I bet there are snipers moving into position as we speak. Our best bet is to get back to the riot. We can lose them there."

"And then what?"

"Then we find my handler. He'll know what to do."

"I could kill you right now," Natasha says. "I could knock you out and leave you. Why should I follow you?"

Clint really hasn't thought this plan through very well. "Aren't you tired of following orders? Of doing everything the Russians tell you to? Don't you want to be your own person, be Natasha Romanov instead of the Black Widow?"

She laughs at that. "You're obviously government and since you're American I'm guessing CIA. Don't tell me you don't have to follow rules there."

Clint smiles. "I broke them by not shooting you the moment I recognized you."

"You'll get killed or fired for that."

"In that case, we'll run away together and be killers for hire."

Natasha's silent for a moment. "You are crazy." Her eyes light up. "I like it."

She grabs his hand and they start running back toward the riots.

* * *

"You need to toss that," Natasha says as they push their way through the crowd. "They're going to be tracking it now."

Clint's texted Coulson so they can meet up. He'd texted him in code, and he desperately hopes that Coulson understands it and doesn't have the place lined with snipers when they go to meet him.

"I can't." Clint rubs his finger over the phone. For a while this phone only texted and called one number though Coulson's personal cell (Clint stole the number one day when he was bored) now makes that two. It's the only link he has left to Dean, and Clint can't just throw it away, especially not to be trampled in the streets of Budapest.

"Sentimentality will get you killed."

"I know but I've learned that you have to take that chance, because if you don't care about anyone then you're not human and it's not really worth living."

Natasha pauses, managing to freeze even though they're being jostled by protesters and there are elbows flying and people trying to push through, and for a moment Clint thinks she can see straight into his soul.

"Americans," she says dismissively and then they're moving again.


	8. Chapter 8

Warnings: Flashbacks to torture

A/N: I'm so excited for the next chapter!

* * *

Clint had half-expected Coulson to kill him and Natasha on the spot when they showed up at the rendezvous point. His other expectation was that Natasha would kill both him and Coulson. In fact, there weren't many scenarios he came up with that didn't end with him dead.

He didn't even get fired. Coulson forced him to take two entire months off active duty, but Fury commended him on turning a powerful asset, and Coulson congratulated him on defying his first orders. Clint didn't understand, but he was certainly grateful.

He spent the time with Natasha when she wasn't in the boring part of SHIELD training. They worked out together; Clint taught her how to throw knives, she taught him how to take a person down with just your thighs, and on their nights off they hustled pool and drank the poor inhabitants of Manhattan under the table.

It was a nice break, not that Clint would ever admit that to anyone, least of all Coulson, but after a couple weeks he was itching to get back into the field.

His opportunity came via strange reports of an immovable object in Puente Antigua, New Mexico. He hears the rumors in the cafeteria about some space junk that landed and got all the locals into a tizzy, and Clint can't help his curiosity so he abandons his plans for lunch and goes straight to Coulson.

"An immovable object, huh?" Clint asks.

Coulson flicks his eyes up, the barest distraction from his report. "That's classified."

Clint laughs. "Nothing is classified in this building except whether Natasha wears anything under her catsuit. So, I heard it's space junk. What does it look like?"

"I didn't take you for a UFO guy. You want to come back with a tinfoil hat?"

"I'm serious. I heard pick-up trucks can't move it. I'm interested."

Coulson looks at Clint a long moment, because he actually does look interested, and that's new. Usually Clint gets excited about missions that involve explosives or getting up close and personal with the enemy. He's a damn good sniper, but he likes being in the middle of the action, the thrill that one small mistake could make the mission end with him dead instead of the target.

When Clint took his earpiece out in Budapest, Coulson thought he'd lost him. He was afraid that Clint had finally broken, and then he got a text saying Clint had found Natasha, and he didn't want to kill her. Under normal circumstances, Coulson would've ordered a hit on both of them, because rogue agents are an obvious danger, but Coulson had been waiting for this moment for a long time. A good agent needed to know when to follow orders and how to make decisions in the field, and if he was being honest, Coulson had been worried about the relative ease with which Clint took out targets especially after Trick Shot and Barney.

Coulson doesn't know if it was going partially deaf or if something happened in Budapest or if it was something else entirely, but he likes the change that's coming over Clint. He's on his way to being the best damn agent this organization's ever had.

Coulson pushes a picture across the table, and Clint picks it up, staring at the hammer embedded in the ground. Clint runs his fingers over the markings on the head of the hammer. They almost look like Celtic knots, but Clint knows that's not the right mythology. He wracks his brain for what should be an easy answer. He knows he's seen these markings before. He knows he's heard of a hammer that can't be lifted by mortal men—right. Mortal men.

Shit.

"We need to go to Puente Antigua," Clint says.

Coulson raises his eyebrows. "We? SHIELD's already working on assembling a team."

Clint puts his elbows on the desk and leans forward so he's in Coulson's personal space and covering the report so Coulson has no choice but to give Clint his full attention. "I know whose hammer that is, and we're going to need a hell of a team."

"What are you talking about?"

"Norse gods." Clint moves around to Coulson's side of the desk and types in a hasty Google search. "You're looking at Mjolnir. It's Thor's hammer."

"Thor's hammer," Coulson repeats. He wonders if maybe Clint needed another couple months off. "You realize that is highly improbable, right?"

"You're a Cap fanboy so you should know every detail about the Tesseract and the Red Skull. Do you remember where he found the Tesseract?"

"In a hidden compartment beneath Yggdrasil," Coulson says. His eyes widen. "That's the Norse tree of life."

Clint nods. "And the Tesseract was hailed as channeling the power of the gods. Are you with me yet?"

"Shit," Coulson breaths and he scrambles for his phone. "Go pack for warm weather. And on our way there you're going to tell me how the hell you know so much about Norse mythology."

Clint grins. "I'm a man of many interests."

He walks briskly back to his rooms and starts throwing together a duffel. Once he's finished he moves onto his daypack which he puts a change of clothes in, some light weapons, an extra toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, an extra arm guard, and the CDs Dean gave him.

While he waits for the call from Coulson telling him when and where to report he starts doing research on Thor. He knows from Dean that it's possible to kill pagan gods but that it's a pain in the ass. Plus, this guy seems like he'd be a bit more difficult to kill than scarecrow dude.

Clint really wishes he could call Dean right now for help, but he can't. He feels a familiar pang in his chest when he thinks of Dean, and he pushes the man out of his head. Dean's not here which means Clint's responsible for making sure Thor doesn't kill anyone. The only question is, how the hell is he supposed to kill a Norse god?

* * *

"Can we please talk?" Sam asks.

Dean does his best to take a deep breath instead of screaming 'no I don't want to freaking talk!'. He doesn't understand Sam's obsession with talking everything out. Dean doesn't want to talk about what happened in hell, how he got out of hell (because he still doesn't know and it scares the shit out of him), or really anything else Sam can think of, because Sam always wants to talk about feelings, and Dean would rather keep those locked up tight and away from prying brothers, thank you very much.

"Do I have a choice?" Dean counters.

Sam crosses his arms over his chest and fixes Dean with his 'I'm going to do this whether you're snarky or not' eyes. "The girl you called before the hellhounds—"

"Aw, shit," Dean says because he really doesn't want to talk about this. He knows exactly where it's going, and he refuses to have this conversation. "Can't you go back to asking me if I remember anything that happened to me down there?"

"You already said you don't. You told her you loved her."

Dean feels a headache coming on. His top two conversations to avoid right now are Clint and hell. Unfortunately, those are the only two things Sam's interested in, besides killing Lilith. On second thought, there's really nothing Dean wants to talk to Sam about, because they're going to end up fighting, and Dean's just gotten out of hell, and he doesn't want to fight with his brother.

If he wasn't avoiding this conversation, he'd tell Sam that she is actually a he named Clint who also happens to be a government agent. He's not sure which would shock Sam more, but he'll have to save that fun for another time when he's not avoiding that conversation.

"You told her you loved her," Sam repeats.

"Yeah, I know. Not only did you just say that, but I happened to have been the person who made that phone call."

"You just don't get it," Sam says slamming his palm against the wall. "At the end, when you're about to die, you call someone and tell them you love them? Was it Lisa? It damn well better been Lisa, because I don't know who else you could know that well."

"It's what people do before they die. They tell people they love them. Sorry for being a conformist. Next time I'm dying I'll come up with some better last words."

Sam's hands twist around air, and he pretends that he's wringing Dean's neck. Why is he such an idiot? "I was standing right there!" Sam explodes. "I was pinned to a wall, forced to watch you die, and you called someone to tell them you loved them. I was right there!"

Dean can't believe this. This is what they're fighting about. "You're being insecure right now? Really? I'm sorry, but I went to hell for you! I brought you back to life at the expense of my soul! I thought that would be a good enough indicator about how much I care about you."

They're both staring each other down, breathing heavy, trying to figure out if this is the point where they hug it out or beat the shit out of each other.

"I hate to interrupt this lovely discussion, but I've got a job for you guys," Bobby says wandering into the room. "Lightning storms in Puente Antigua. Talk about a chunk of UFO landing. Place is crawling with suits."

"Puente Antigua?" Dean asks.

"New Mexico."

"We're supposed to be trying to find out who this Castiel guy is," Sam reminds everyone in case Dean had forgotten that a woman had gotten her eyes burned out trying to help him.

"We can figure out my resurrection puzzle later," Dean says grabbing his coat off the back of a chair. "I've been itching for a hunt, and I think it's safe to assume that I got resurrected for a purpose and since the only thing I'm good at is hunting, I'm going to go hunt."

"Dean," Sam sighs but Dean's already in the next room throwing a bag of weapons together.

"Besides," Dean calls, "I've been itching to work on my tan. Turns out several months buried underground makes you pasty."

* * *

The government's already gotten the crater surrounded by the time Sam and Dean make it to New Mexico. Dean wants to launch a full on assault, but since there's only two of them, Sam makes a convenient argument for not taking that approach.

Instead, they split up to tackle different local hangouts and try to get some intel about what exactly is buried there.

Dean, because he's selfless, volunteers to take the bar, a dingy joint that has one forlorn pool table. He heads to the bar hoping that drinks will be cheap in this town when he spots a guy nursing a beer by himself at the end of the bar.

This isn't an abnormal sight except that usually people that attractive aren't alone for long at bars and don't usually look so troubled. Oh, and Dean would recognize those biceps anywhere. Dean pauses in the middle of his order and stares, because he can't believe this.

Clint is on the other end of the bar. Clint who Dean thought he'd never see again. Dean doesn't know what to do. Does he go up and say hi? Offer to buy him a drink? Dean's supposed to be dead, and he doesn't want to freak Clint out, but this can't be a coincidence them meeting like this.

So Dean just stares as words fly in and out of his head. He wants to kiss Clint senseless and apologize. He wants to say he meant to call, but he's only been alive for about a day, and forty years of hell made him forget Clint's phone number.

"Hey," the bartender says, trying to get Dean's attention. "You still want a drink?"

Dean watches Clint turn at the sound of the bartender's voice, probably curious about the idiot that can't order a drink, and he holds his breath as Clint's eyes fall on him. Clint's hand tightens around his beer, he blinks twice in rapid succession, and his mouth falls open.

Dean still can't do anything but stand and stare. He's vaguely aware of the bartender's noise of disgust and that he moves down the bar. He can hear the door to the bar swing open but it's muted, and he doesn't turn his head to see who it, because he can't look away from Clint.

That's why he notices the flash of silver. He closes his eyes briefly because of course Clint is going to make sure he's real. He nods toward the exit and heads out to where Clint can stab him with no witnesses.

Dean stands with his legs spread about shoulder width apart and his arms open as he waits for Clint to come at him.

"What the hell kind of trick is this?" Clint demands, and there's a tremble in his voice. He makes up for it by gripping the knife tighter.

"No trick," Dean says, "but you're not the first person who's gone through all the tests. If you're going to stab me, I'd prefer somewhere non-fatal since I'm not sure how many times I can come back from the dead in one lifetime."

Clint drops the knife. "You're back." He shakes his head like he's waiting for Dean to disappear. "You're actually back."

Dean nods and he understands Clint's disbelief, because he's feeling the same way. Someone named Castiel brought him out of hell for unknown purposes. He doesn't even know what Castiel is except some guy who can burn out people's eyes, explode a forest, and destroy a gas station.

"I have no idea how," Dean says, "but yeah. I'm back."

Clint doesn't move, because he can't believe this is true. How many beers had he had to drink? He'd thought he'd only just started on his first one, but that must be wrong if he's seeing dead people. He grabs the salt shaker of this pocket and unscrews it behind his back. His eyes are still locked with Dean's as he tosses the salt at him.

Dean coughs and spits out salt. "Eww. You owe me a drink for that."

Clint can't breathe. He's not a ghost. He's not a demon. He's reasonably sure he's not a skinwalker. He's come back from death before, and is it really that much of a stretch to believe he's come back again?

Clint tackles him to the ground, his hands fisted in Dean's jacket, his mouth pressed to Dean's. He tastes like salt, but Clint doesn't care, because Dean's alive, and he's finally kissing him, and he's actually alive.

Clint tightens his grip on Dean's jacket and pulls him up even as Clint presses his body even harder against Dean's so they're as close as they possibly can be. Dean's arms wrap around Clint's body, holding him as he kisses him back, and Clint still can't believe this.

"I'm never going to believe you're dead again," Clint says pulling back. He kisses along Dean's cheekbone, down his jaw then back up the other side.

"I'm sorry," Dean says because he doesn't know what else to say. He weaves his hands through Clint's hair and pulls his lips back to Dean's. Their kiss is frantic, teeth clashing, tongues dueling, each trying to confirm that what they're feeling is real, that the person they're kissing is there and that this is happening.

"Sorry for coming back?" Clint asks between kisses.

"Sorry for leaving." Dean tilts Clint's head to the side and kisses his way down Clint's neck. His mouth closes over Clint's pulse, feels the reassuring beat of life, and sucks.

Clint groans and grinds his hips down against Dean's. "Didn't sound like you had much of a choice."

Dean brushes his fingers over the shell of Clint's ears then tugs on the lobe. "I'm sorry you had to hear that." Dean runs his thumb over the inside of Clint's ears and Clint jerks back.

"I'm sorry," Dean says though he's not sure what he's sorry for this time.

Clint winces but tries to shrug it off. "Not your fault. They're just sensitive. In a bad way."

"Did something happen?"

Clint looks away and starts to climb off of Dean realizing that they've just been making out in the middle of the road.

Dean grabs Clint's hand and tugs him back down. Clint lands with a knee on either side of Dean, his hands splayed against Dean's chest.

"Tell me," Dean says, his hands covering Clint's.

Clint shakes his head, but Dean's hands are warm on top of his and insistent. "Explosion. I didn't get out in time."

"You?" Dean asks. His hands slide up Clint's arms, palms pressing against the dips of muscle. "You're never distracted."

Clint can't look away from Dean's eyes, and he can't keep the words from tumbling out of his mouth. "I had a pretty good reason to be."

Guilt flashes across Dean's face, and his hands squeeze Clint's arms for a brief second before it's Dean's turn to try and pull away. "I'm so sorry. I—"

"You really need to stop apologizing," Clint says. He clamps his legs down around Dean's waist so he can't go anywhere and grabs Dean's face to force him to meet Clint's eyes. "And I'm not angry with you. I would've lost my ability to hear anything ever again just to hear you say what you did."

Clint bends down and captures Dean's lips in a searing kiss before Dean can protest again. This kiss is slower than the last ones, a gentle slide of lips, Clint's mouth coaxing Dean's open. It's a promise that everything's going to be okay, that everything between them is forgiven. Clint's hands shake in Dean's hair as they mouths move against each other.

Dean's hands slide up Clint's thighs, burning through the fabric of Clint's pants, and his mouth falls open as Dean's hands knead the strong the muscle in his legs, as his hands inch further and further up.

Dean laughs and nips at Clint's neck, feeling Clint's breath hot against his skin, listening to every gasp, every sharp intake of breath, every sign that Clint is really here with him right now.

"We should probably take this somewhere other than the middle of the street," Clint says as Dean's hands slide around to cup his ass.

"I thought you'd be an exhibitionist, being in the circus and all," Dean says, murmuring the words against Clint's neck.

Clint shudders and his legs tighten around Dean's body. "I want you all to myself right now."

"Mmm," Dean says, the word sending small vibrations through Clint's body. "So you are an exhibitionist." He grins and slides out from underneath Clint. "But I like the idea of going someplace more private. I would offer my room, but Sam and I are fighting about you so you probably shouldn't meet yet."

Clint laces his fingers through Dean's. "You're fighting about me?"

Dean sighs and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. "Kind of. We're having the same fight we always do, but he's dragged you into it, because of the phone call." Dean looks away, guilty.

"Stop that," Clint says. "I could've run while I talked to you. I didn't. And I'm fine. My hearing aids are actually pretty high tech, and I've been learning sign language."

"I got you hurt. All I want is to protect the people I care about, and I never seem to be able to."

"Hey." Clint tugs on their joined hands. "Neither of us are allowed to be sad or mopey or anything negative tonight. You're back from the dead, I'm off duty, and we're going to have a good night."

"Deal. Your place?"

Clint laughs and starts heading in the opposite direction of his motel. "Because taking a Winchester to an inn full of government agents is such a good idea."

"Still a wanted man even though I'm supposed to be dead?" Dean asks looking way too pleased about this fact.

"The FBI is pissed because you keep coming back from the dead. I'm sure they don't believe you're dead this time, and I can't really blame them since you're walking down the street with me right now."

"Wait," Dean says, pausing and they're still in the middle of the street but no cars seem to be interested in driving around Puente Antigua at 11pm. "Do you have orders to kill me on sight?"

"Naw, that would be encroaching on FBI territory. I do have orders to bring you to the FBI, but I'm not one for following orders lately."

"Really?" Dean asks.

"I've changed," Clint answers. "Now are we going to get a room or what?"

"I'll race you to the nearest motel," Dean says. "Loser has to pay."

Clint grins. "You're on."

* * *

They barely get the door shut and locked before they're all over each other, Dean pinning Clint against the door, trying to kiss Clint and take his shirt off at the same time. He reluctantly pulls back long enough to yank the shirt over Clint's head and then he's kissing him again, and his hands are memorizing every inch of Clint's chest.

His nails scrape down Clint's skin, drawing faint red lines, and Clint presses a thigh between Dean's legs, and Dean groans and doesn't realize Clint's pulling his shirt off until suddenly Dean's hands are caught up in the fabric.

Clint laughs. It's light and mocking but edged with need, and Dean tosses his shirt over his shoulder and presses his chest against Clint's so they're skin to skin for the first time, and the heat is almost overwhelming.

Heat shouldn't bother him, because nothing could be worse than the heat of hell but—

Dean staggers back as images flash through his mind. Screaming. His voice. Others'. The rack. Blood. Salt. Burning. Everything burning.

"Dean?" Clint asks and there's a hand reaching for him, someone's worried, and that's not normal. There's no concern in hell. There isn't even pity. There's only rage and pain and trying to erase your pain by inflicting it on someone else.

The fingers try to hold onto his arm but they slip as Dean stumbles backward, and he hits something soft. He doesn't remember anything soft. He remembers the burn of rope against his wrists as it held him in place. He remembers the painful stretch of his body as the rack was wound tighter. He remembers the smooth hilt of the knife Alastair handed to him.

Dean's chest is too tight, and his breaths are coming too fast, and he can see the edges of his vision beginning to black out. Control, he needs to be in control. He can't afford to show weakness. He can't break. Except he did. He broke and all of hell knows it. Celebrated it.

Steady hands grab his shoulders, and they're cool against his skin and that helps jerk him back into reality.

"Shit," Clint says, his eyes running over Dean's body. "You're burning up. Is this normal?"

Dean laughs. "I got yanked from hell yesterday. Nothing is normal." He wants to stand up and say everything's fine and go back to what they're doing, but he's afraid that he doesn't have the energy to stand up, and he likes the feel of Clint's hands on him, like Clint's trying to ground him, like he's the only thing keeping Dean from slipping back under.

Clint's pinky brushes the scar tissue on Dean's shoulder, and Dean feels a splash of cool wash over his body. It drives out the fire, drives out the memories, and Dean feels like he can breathe again.

He twists his shoulder to get another look at the mark. Apparently the hand print is more than just an ugly marking on his body. Good to know.

Clint follows Dean's gaze, and he draws in a quick breath as he stares at the hand print. "Is this?" he asks his fingers ghosting over the skin like he's afraid to touch it. "Is this new?"

"Only clue to how I got out of hell," Dean says, sitting up and sliding to the edge of the bed.

He spreads his legs and Clint comes to stand between them, his fingers brushing the handprint. "Someone grabbed you and pulled you out?"

"Something. Probably something bad."

Clint lays his hand over the handprint, but his hands are too small to cover it completely. "Why bad?"

"You don't get to live after your time is up because of something good. An innocent man died the first time my life was saved, and my dad lost his life and his soul the second time. I don't want to know who I hurt this time."

Dean knocks Clint's hand away and slides across to the other end of the bed so they're no longer touching. Sam swears up and down that he didn't make a deal, and Dean believes him, but that doesn't mean someone isn't suffering because of him.

"I'm sorry," Dean says though he stays curled up in his corner of the bed, as far away from Clint as he can get. "This probably wasn't what you were expecting when we got a room together." He slowly forces himself to unfurl like a plant tentatively reaching out toward the sun. "I'm good now. We can give this another go."

He pats the space next to him, and Clint climbs onto the bed, but he leaves a good six inches between them, and he doesn't even reach a hand into the space.

"What did I say about apologizing?" Clint asks.

He shifts to his side and props himself up on an elbow so he can look over at Dean in the dim lighting of their motel room. He looks better than Clint would've expected for someone pulled out of hell, but he doesn't look great. It's not so much the worry creases in his forehead or the tired sag of skin under his eyes or even the fact that his skin is an off-grey though all of those contribute. What really worries him is the haunted look in Dean's eyes, like a man who's seen the edge and can't figure out how to come back from it.

"I'm sure hell is worse than I could even imagine," Clint says. "I'm not surprised that you're shaken up after a four month visit."

Dean's eyes immediately drop to the comforter, a faded floral monstrosity, and even if Clint wasn't a professionally trained agent, he'd recognize the look of a man who's hiding something.

"What is it?" Clint asks.

Dean shakes his head, but his mouth opens anyways, his lips trembling as they try to form words. "Time works differently down there." Dean tugs one of the pillows to his chest and his body molds around it. He looks over at Clint over the edge of the pillow, tears wetting his lashes and making them stick together. "I was there for forty years."

"Shit," Clint says and then he's reaching out and tossing the pillow away and dragging Dean into his arms, and Dean comes apart. He clings to Clint's shoulders and cries, and Clint doesn't know how to make this better, doesn't even know how to begin helping someone through this, so he just holds Dean close and hopes that being here with him will be enough.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Except for language there are no warnings for this chapter.

The-Living-Shadow: So, Sam and Dean always have episodes that coincidentally coincide with whatever personal struggle they're having at the time so they can make significant faces at each other, and I've planned out a whole fanfiction dedicated to Thor, Loki, Sam, and Dean getting together and pretty much just shouting, because Dean very strongly believes that brothers should be forgiven anything, yes even almost destroying the world, and Thor being like 'yes listen to this wise man' and then Loki and Sam pulling pouty faces, and I decided not to write it, because it would take a lot of time so then I was going to find a way to fit it into this story, but then I found something else to do with Loki that I like even better, and I'm hoping other people will agree with me. So yes, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the parallels between the Winchesters and the royal Asgardian family. Probably too much time.

* * *

The next morning Clint is woken up by violent twitching next to him, and he barely avoids getting hit in the face. He rolls out of bed and is on his feet in an instant, a knife already in his hand.

Dean blinks blearily at him, having been startled out of his nightmare. He looks at the knife and raises his eyebrows. "Waking up to my face that bad?"

It's supposed to be a joke, but it comes out sounding needy, and Dean can't muster up the energy for the laugh that was supposed to sell it.

Clint takes a few breaths to convince his body that he's not in danger and tosses the knife to the ground to join their discarded shirts. He looks at Dean, chest bare and vulnerable in the middle of the big bed, and he still can't believe that Dean is here and alive even though he's spent the past few hours holding him, sleeping next to him.

"I startle easily," Clint says even though that's obvious. "I have some issues."

"Me too."

They continue to stare at each other, neither knowing what to do when Clint's cell phone rings. He digs it out of his jeans, and he can't believe he'd slept in his jeans but he hadn't wanted to wake Dean up by stripping down to his boxers.

"Agent Barton," Clint says by way of greeting. His face goes darker by the second and eventually he grits out a, "be right there, sir," and he snaps his phone shut. "Get dressed, there's been an incident."

"An incident?" Dean asks but he's already up and moving.

"Security breach," Clint answers pulling his t-shirt back on. Coulson is going to give him shit for showing up in civvies, but he's also going to get shit for bringing one of the FBI's Most Wanted with him, especially since Dean Winchester is supposed to be dead. "And not the buff blonde I thought was Thor. A tall, dark, and moody guy. You know any of those?"

Dean's insides clench for a moment, and he can't breathe. "Sam. Shit." He almost rips his shirt in his haste to get it on, and he flips open his phone. No messages, no texts, no anything. Sam had just decided to do the hunt on his own. Once Dean rescues him he's going to kill him.

Dean freezes for a moment, because he doesn't know what to do. Why is Clint telling him that they have Sam? He has to know that Dean's going to go after his brother. Is he hoping Dean won't go in hot since they're Clint's friends? Clint of all people should know that Sam comes first, that Sam will always come first, and Dean will kill anyone that stands between him and his brother.

"Woah there," Clint says as Dean starts storming about the room, looking ready to murder someone. "I can't bring you in if you're going to act like this. You need to calm down."

"Bring me in?" Dean asks. He can't believe this. One day out of hell and Sam's in trouble with the feds, and Dean's about to be as well. "You're bringing me in?"

"Not like that you idiot," Clint says and he wishes Dean was close enough that he could hit him upside the head. "Come on, my handler wants to know why Sam Winchester, who supposedly died in an explosion in Monument, Colorado, is alive and poking around alien tech."

"Because he's a stupid impatient bastard, and I'm going to kill him. Sam, not your handler."

"You're not killing anyone," Clint says. "We're meeting my handler and your brother at the local diner, because I'm not going to make it through this morning without coffee."

"Does your handler know about me?" Dean asks following Clint out because a pastry sounds really good right now. A donut or a croissant or maybe a danish. Maybe he'll get all three. After all, if his hands are full of breakfast food then he can't strangle Sam.

"Everyone knows about the Winchester brothers."

"That's not what I meant."

Clint sighs because he knew what Dean meant, he just didn't want to answer. "No, he doesn't. Until ten minutes ago he thought you and your brother were dead, but he's good at dealing with surprises. And the abnormal."

"You better be calling my mysterious back to life magic abnormal and not me," Dean says though there's no real threat in his voice.

Clint smiles but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. He's pretty sure Coulson is going to kill him for having been in secret contact with Dean Winchester for the better part of three years. Clint really hopes that the diner is crowded, because Coulson doesn't like to gun people down in front of civilians.

* * *

Clint has Dean go in through the back of the diner, and it's his job to stall Coulson and try to break the ice in a way that won't get anyone killed. Coulson and Sam are sitting across from each other at a booth, Coulson facing the main entrance. Clint waves as he comes in and Coulson waggles a few of the fingers on his cup of coffee in greeting. His other hand is nowhere to be seen. Clint bets it's under the table with a gun trained on Sam.

Clint grins as stops in front of the booth, and he keep his voice low so none of the patrons can hear him. "You might want to shoot now if you want to get credit for the kill, because there's someone on his way that wants Sam Winchester dead more than you do."

Coulson and Sam both frown, but then Sam's mouth falls open, and Clint can hear Dean's boots on the tile. He watches as Sam tries to make subtle 'run while you can' gestures, but they're not as subtle as he thinks they are because Coulson turns to look, and his left eye twitches when he sees Dean. For Coulson, that's an expression of outright shock.

"I thought you were dead," Coulson says by way of greeting.

Dean grins. "Two days ago and you would've been right." He brushes by Clint and slides into the booth next to Sam. "Have you guys ordered yet, because I'm starving."

Sam elbows Dean. "This is serious, Dean. They're SHIELD, it's government."

"I know," Dean says, "and stop hitting me before I do their job for them. I can't believe you went off on your own."

"I must've gotten used to working on my own."

Dean shoves Sam into the wall, one hand digging into Sam's shoulder, the other pressing into his leg. "Good thing I came back then because you're shit at it."

Coulson clears his throat. "You'll have plenty of time to argue later when you're in custody, and right now I don't even care how you managed to fake your own deaths, again. I want to know why in you're in Puente Antigua."

"Vacation," Sam says while at the same time Dean says, "Thor."

The two brothers glare at each other.

"Thor?" Coulson asks. He flicks his eyes over to Clint. "Did you tell a civilian about our case?"

"No need to get your suit in a bunch," Dean says, not liking the way Clint shifts his weight like he's actually a little bit afraid of this guy. No one threatens the people Dean cares about. "He's all uptight about government secrets. I didn't even know he worked for SHIELD until Sammy here just told me, and I know you're his handler, but I don't have a name so I call you the paperwork bastard." Dean flashes Coulson a smile, proud of himself for not mentioning that until this morning, Dean didn't even know Clint's last name. Clint Barton. Dean likes it.

"I'm speaking to my agent right now," Coulson says. "You can have your turn next."

"Suits," Dean says rolling his eyes.

"I haven't talked to him about the case," Clint says, "but remember that talk we had about the Winchesters being involved with the supernatural?"

"You mean the one where you apparently lied to me?"

"No lying," Clint says. "Misdirecting and hiding the truth? Yes, but I didn't outright lie to you."

Coulson's hand tightens around his coffee mug, and Clint knows he's going to be in serious shit later. "How long have you been in contact with a federal fugitive?"

Clint sighs and slides into the booth because he might as well be sitting for this. "Since the case I first met him."

"The werewolf," Coulson says, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

"Also known as the one where Clint almost got my ass chewed up by a deranged bitch," Dean says. He flashes Coulson a smile and waves the waitress over.

"I'm sure you would've come back from that," Coulson says. "You appear to have a habit for returning from the dead."

Dean pales and stutters over his order of chocolate chip pancakes, sausage, bacon, and a chocolate milk. A leg stretches out to wrap around his as Sam orders yogurt, fresh fruit, and orange juice. Dean looks over at Clint and gives him a small smile. He's going to be fine. He was in hell, but he's out now. For how long though? Is his freedom temporary? If he dies is it back to the pit?

"I need a smoke," Dean says.

Sam looks at him like he's grown three heads. "You don't smoke."

"You don't know me," Dean says, automatic, and he drops his hands to his knees so no one will see them shake.

"And whose fault is that?" Sam demands. "You're the one who's always keeping secrets. I'm always here for you to talk to, but you never want to. Instead you tell your secrets to some," Sam pauses and he slowly turns to look at Clint, "no," he says gaze snapping back to Dean. "You have to be kidding me. A suit? Really? Are you out of your mind?"

"Says the one who waltzed into a government operation and got himself arrested," Dean hisses even though Clint and his handler are close enough to hear anything said between the brothers.

"I had to see the markings on the hammer," Sam says. "I had to make sure it was Mjolnir. It is, by the way, which means we're so screwed."

Coulson finishes taking another sip of coffee and sets his mug down loud enough to get the Winchesters' attention. "I should place you both into prison cells you could have no hope of getting out of and let you rot there for the rest of your lives."

Dean shrugs because really, nothing can be done to him that'll be worse than hell. "Look, we came down here because we thought there were demons. Turns out there's a pagan god on the loose, and you're stupidly trying to hold his hammer hostage. We're not prepared to take him out or deal with the epic shit storm that will reign down when he finds you. We're more than happy to leave."

"We can't leave," Sam says. "There are people here who could get hurt."

"And what are we going to do?" Dean demands. "I'm guessing Thor is killed either by being stabbed with oaken stakes or by us burning down the first tree he blessed which is somewhere in Scandinavia. We have no oaken stakes, and we can't deforest Scandinavia from New Mexico."

"I don't believe this," Coulson says. He looks over at Clint. "Please tell me this is one of your really bad jokes."

Clint shakes his head. "The supernatural is real. These two fight it."

Dean slings an arm around Sam's shoulder and grins. "We're damn good at our job, sir."

"You really think the Norse gods exist?" Coulson asks unable to believe that he's just asked that question.

"Yep." Dean pauses to get his breakfast from the waitress and he goes about tearing his pancakes into pieces that can be crammed into his mouth as she tries to flirt with Sam and then leaves. "And one of them is missing his favorite toy. Seen any giant blonde dudes wandering around recently? Buff, probably in some weird looking clothes?"

Clint and Coulson exchange looks. "We had a guy like that," Clint says, "but he couldn't lift it. He seemed really upset about it."

"No kidding," Sam says carefully not looking at Dean, because Dean eating always makes him lose his appetite. "That hammer is his birthright. Only those who are worthy are able to lift Mjolnir. If he's not worthy then he must be pissed."

"How does a god lose their birthright?" Clint asks.

Sam shrugs. "The plus side is, he probably can't use any of his powers without the hammer so everyone's safe for the moment. We definitely need to work on how to kill him before he gets his powers back."

Dean washes a mouthful of pancake down with some milk. "You go start lighting forest fires, and I'll start sharpening stakes."

Sam frowns. "I don't want you putting yourself in danger like that. Why don't you light the fires?

Dean gives him a long hard look and starts cramming sausage patties into his mouth.

"Sorry," Sam says. Dean ignores him.

Coulson claps his hands together, claiming their attention. "While it's entertaining listening to you two talk about environmental terrorism and attempted murder, I can't actually let you follow through on either of those plans. Not only are both of those illegal, but you're both wanted men."

"I thought we were listed as dead," Dean says. "You could let us do our job and let the world continue thinking we're dead, and everything'll be fine."

Coulson looks from Dean over to Clint, a frown working its way into Coulson's forehead. "I think I see where your sudden desire to break the rules came from."

Dean's eyebrows shoot up. "You're breaking rules?"

Clint tries to shrug off the intense stares he's getting from both men. "Look, it's not a big deal. I just did a little thinking, and decided not to kill a target until I'd given her a chance to prove that she could be saved." He ignores the way Dean's eyes soften into something almost like pride. "But now that she's experiencing SHIELD's version of hazing, she probably wishes I'd killed her."

"Working for," Coulson pauses remembering he's in mixed company, and he can't come out and say that Natasha Romanov is working undercover at Stark Industries. "We're not hazing her."

Clint laughs. "Whatever you say. Now, can we figure out what we're going to do?"

"We're not getting arrested again," Sam says, "Not after last time."

"You mean that time you killed a building of civilians and FBI agents?" Coulson asks.

Sam leans across the table. "We didn't kill them."

"Stop it, Sammy," Dean says, putting a hand on Sam's shoulder. "It's not worth trying to explain. And paperwork bastard, if it's not too much trouble could you put your gun away? I'm worried you're going to sneeze and accidently shoot me in the leg."

Coulson stares at Dean for a really long moment before he tucks his gun back into its holster and reaches his hand across the table. "My name is Agent Coulson. You really think you can kill Thor if he becomes a threat?"

"I'm willing to risk my life trying." Dean shakes his hand as both Clint and Sam give an exasperated sigh.

"Are you really that eager to die again?" Sam asks. "Because I kind of like having a brother, and I'd rather not lose you again so soon."

"Same thing," Clint says. "Except for the brother part."

Dean turns away from Sam, because he's so not ready to deal with his melodramatics right now, and he turns on the full force of his charm as he smirks at Clint. "How would you define us then?" He lets his gazes drop from Clint's eyes to his lips, and he lets his eyes fill with the heat from last night.

Clint can feel a blush rising on his cheeks despite his best efforts.

"This is awkward," Coulson says interrupting the moment. "I'm about to do something incredibly unprofessional so please stop flirting so I don't add to my shame by throwing up."

Clint turns to Coulson, the blush falling as his face gives way to shock. "Did you just make a joke?"

Coulson ignores him. "Against my better judgment, I'm trusting you two to prepare for Thor being a threat. You can gather your stakes and your lighters, but if Thor regains his powers then I expect you to be here to fight. Is that understood?"

The words 'yes, sir' are on the tip of Dean's tongue, and for a moment he almost feels like he's twelve again and looking up at John as if the world revolves around him. And then he remembers where he is, and he smiles instead.

"Clint, I'm going to need your number again," Dean says sliding his phone across the table. "My other phone got," crushed by hellhounds maybe or exploded by demon magic, "broken, and I didn't come back with all my memories intact."

Clint takes the phone and types the numbers in before sending himself a text so he'll have Dean's new number. "I'll let you know if something happens with Thor, and we need you back."

"I won't be far," Dean says. "I just need to find a live oak tree so I can chop off some branches. Just promise me something, if Thor does get his powers back, please don't go after him."

Clint passes Dean's phone back and lets his fingers linger on Dean's for a moment. "You know I can't do that. It's my job to protect people. If he comes back, I'm holding him off until the cavalry arrives."

"I'll make sure to learn how to ride a horse while I'm scouring for oak trees," Dean says but his smile falls short of his eyes. He slides out of the booth and tosses a twenty down. "Come on, Sammy, let's get you a plane ticket to Scandinavia."

"You realize that's not a country, right?" Sam asks. "It's a region. And now I get why you won't go. You just don't want to get on an airplane."

Coulson continues drinking his coffee until the sounds of the Winchesters' fight fades completely and then he turns the full weight of his disapproval on Clint. "When this is all over, we're going to have a long talk."

Clint's not looking forward to that talk.

* * *

Sam and Dean are almost to the airport when Dean gets a text, and for once he's glad he decided to let Sam drive.

Clint: We're under attack by a giant robot. Any lore on those?

Dean: No, but I've got a trunk full of toys. We're on our way back.

"Turn around," Dean orders. "Shit just went down."

"We can't do anything if it's Thor," Sam says. "We have nothing that could hurt him."

"It's a fire powered robot, and wow I wish that sentence was funny and not completely horrifying. We need to get back there."

Sam only hesitates a moment before banging a uey in the middle of the highway. He cuts across the median to do it, and Dean closes his eyes as he hears pebbles and dirt hit the underside of his baby. He's going to have to give the Impala a good cleaning after this trip.

Dean: Don't do anything stupid before I get there to save your ass

Dean stares at his phone and tries not to think about why Clint's not responding. He tells himself it's because he's busy, he's fighting, he can't afford the distraction, but he can't help that nagging though that Clint is sprawled on the ground somewhere dying.

"Drive faster," Dean says.

"He's fine," Sam says but he presses down harder on the gas.

They're almost back to the town when Dean gets another text.

* * *

Clint: Everything's fine. Thor got his powers back and wasted the robot. He's no longer anywhere to be found. According to this science chick he met he's from outer space, and he went home. More details later. We're headed out so phone dinner date tonight?

Dean: 8pm sharp. Don't be late.

"They're good for now," Dean says tucking his phone back into his pocket. "We should head back to Bobby's. See if we can figure out who Castiel is. Or what he is, I guess."


	10. Chapter 10

Warnings: Non-explicit torture of a non-main character by a main character. Sort of canon.

A/N: I swear this is a fix-it. Things will get happier in the next two chapters. Also, I start diverging from the Supernatural canon here so if things don't line up with episodes or actual plot that's why.

* * *

Dean: Call when you have time?

Clint: Yeah, after my debriefing

Dean: I want to debrief you

Clint: You suck

Dean: And swallow ;)

Dean stares at the picture in Bobby's book as he waits for Clint to call and Sam to get back with pie. He's not sure which one he wants more right now.

His phone buzzes, catching him off guard, and Bobby rolls his eyes before heading into the kitchen.

Dean flips open his phone. "Was it boring?"

"For once, no. Explaining to people that Norse gods exist is kind of fun. What did you want to talk about?"

"We summoned Castiel last night," Dean says. "The thing that raised me." That gripped me tight and raised me from perdition. Dean rolls his eyes. Who even talks like that? He can hear Castiel's voice answer in his head, _an angel of the Lord_. Dean really doesn't want to believe that, but the picture in Bobby's book is pretty good proof.

"Thing?" Clint asks. "You still don't know what he is?"

"He claims to be an angel."

_I'm an angel of the Lord._

Clint whistles. "An angel? I guess if demons are real then angels would be too, but damn. An angel rescued you?"

"I don't believe he's an angel. Well, maybe I do. Damn it. Before last night, I didn't believe in angels."

Clint's voice is quiet as it comes through the phone. "Apparently they believe in you."

_What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved? Because God commanded it. Because we have work for you_.

"They didn't do it out of the kindness of their hearts. If they even have hearts. Apparently they have work for me. They—" Dean pauses when Bobby stumbles into the room, all the color drained from his face. "I'll call you back. I think I just got a job."

"I would tell you to be safe, but apparently you've got angels watching out for you."

Any other time Dean would argue with him, but he needs to find out what's wrong with Bobby so he just hangs up.

"What's happened?"

"Something's wrong with Olivia. We need to get Sam and check on her."

* * *

Dean: I hate angels. Dicks with wings. No, not even that because they don't even have dicks. Junkless douche bags

Clint: Do we need to talk?

Dean: I hate Sam. I hate Ruby. I hate Lilith.

Clint: Dean?

Dean: I hate everything

Dean's phone buzzes, a call instead of text, and he waits for it to ring three times before flipping it open.

"I don't want to talk about it," Dean says.

"Then why did you pick up?"

Dean's quiet for a moment, considering. "I hate you too."

Clint laughs. "You don't mean that. Tell me what happened."

"Castiel sent me back in time to watch my grandparents get murdered, my dad die, and my mom make a deal with a demon to bring him back. And in case that wasn't shitty enough, turns out Sam's been infected with demon blood since he was a baby, and if I don't get him to stop screwing around then the angels are going to kill them. So, I hate everything."

"They are dicks."

"I know!"

"But you don't hate everything."

Dean sighs. "I don't hate you."

"Want to get a drink?"

"I thought you'd never ask. I have a couple beers in the fridge. You want to see if we can find a hockey game to watch while we drink?"

"We'll pick teams," Clint says. "Every time my team gets a hit, you drink. Every time your team gets a hit, I drink. Goal means you finish your drink."

"Turning hockey into a drinking game?" Dean asks. "Are you trying to get me drunk, Agent Barton?"

"I found a Penguins-Flyers game. I pick the Penguins."

Dean flips to the right channel and grins as he leans back into his arm chair. "Definitely trying to get me drunk. These two teams get physical. Too bad I'm in Kansas and you're wherever the hell you are. I'd like to get physical with you."

Clint groans. "You have the worst pick-up lines."

Dean grins into the receiver. "That's what years of porn will do to you. Aw, damn it, Crosby." He takes a long drink. This is going to be a long game.

* * *

Dean: I didn't know it was possible to hate angels even more

Clint: What now?

Dean: They want to wipe out a whole town. They do realize they're supposed to be protecting humans, not killing them, right?

* * *

Dean leans back against the park bench and watches the children scrambling over the playground. There's a group of giggling ones that are playing don't-touch-the-ground tag, and they shriek as they dodge the boy with the striped shirt who's it. There are two girls showing off on the monkey bars and over toward the end of the playground an older brother is helping his little brother with the zip line.

Dean feels a weight lift off his chest as they play. He knows he should be upset because another seal was broken and that brings them closer to the apocalypse, but that's the future, and the future has always been hazy and uncertain in his mind. What he knows right now is that all these kids are playing, carefree and happy, and it's because he didn't let a bunch of angels burn the town to the ground.

He doesn't understand why Cas can't comprehend Dean's lack of faith. He'd always been taught that angels were pure goodness, that they were supposed to protect, and then he'd been taught that angels didn't exist, and now that they're real they're nothing like he thought they'd be. They're calculating and have a casual approach to human life that he can't accept.

Dean's thoughts are interrupted when Cas appears beside him, and he really needs to put a bell on the guy. At least he hasn't appeared in Dean's lap yet; though, that's only a matter of time. The guy has no sense of personal space.

"These people," Cas says looking around them, not only at the kids but also at their parents and babysitters, "they're all my father's creations. They're works of art."

Dean looks at Cas, really looks at him for a moment, and wonders if he's telling the truth. Uriel had been ready to destroy the town without a second thought, ends justify the means and all that, but if Castiel agrees with Dean then maybe Dean has an ally in heaven. Maybe not all the angels are a bunch of lousy bastards.

"I have questions," Cas admits and he looks Dean in the eye as he says it, even though this is an intensely personal confession. "I have doubts. I don't know what is right and what is wrong anymore."

There's something so open about Cas's face that Dean wants to look away, because it's almost too painful to bear. Cas who is the embodiment of faith, who trusts without knowing, who believes without reason, is starting to be unsure, and this is what Dean had wanted, for Cas to stop being such a freaking soldier, but now that he can see Cas breaking in front of him, he wants it to stop. He wants Cas to believe again, to wipe the crushed look of despair on his face.

Dean knows what it's like to be disappointed in someone you trust. He knows what it's like to realize that that person you've always looked up to isn't all they're supposed to be, and he knows how that cuts at you, because you've listened to them all this time, and if they're wrong, then maybe you've been doing wrong when you thought you were doing good. He knows that he's nothing like Castiel and John Winchester is certainly no God, but he understands the kind of pain Cas is going through.

He wishes he knew how to make things right.

* * *

"Ruby's helping me," Sam says. "She saved my life!"

"She's making you drink demon blood," Dean argues. He couldn't believe it when Cas had told him. At first he'd been pissed because Cas had showed up and said 'I was spying on your brother' and then he told Dean what he'd found out, and Dean stopped being pissed at Cas and started thinking of ways to strangle Sam. How does Sam not see what's wrong with this? "She's twisting you, and maybe you needed her while I was gone, but I'm back now. I can protect you."

"I don't need you to protect me. I can protect myself now."

"Right," Dean says. "As long as you're hopped up on the demon 'roids."

"You have no right to judge me," Sam says. "You left me on my own, because you were too weak to face the world without me. I'm sorry that you don't like how I coped, but it wasn't exactly easy for me having to live without you."

Sam grabs his jacket off the bed where he'd tossed it when he came in.

"Where are you going?" Dean asks. Is Sam seriously walking out on him? Sam who always demands that they talk out their issues? He's going to leave when Dean's trying to have an actual conversation with him?

"Out," Sam answers. He doesn't say anything else, just stomps out of the motel room, making sure to slam the door behind him.

"Damn it." Dean punches the wall. "Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!"

"Does that actually make you feel better?"

Dean spins around, fist raised to see Cas standing right behind him. "Would you stop doing that!"

Cas tilts his head to the side. "Doing what? Coming to you when you are distressed?"

Dean takes a deep breath and reminds himself that punching angels is not a good idea. Most angels he'd punch without a second thought, but Cas had pulled him out of hell and was at least trying to be less of a dick these days.

"Never mind," Dean says because he doesn't want to chase Cas away. Not right now when he needs someone to keep him from chasing after Sam and strangling him. "I'm worried about Sam."

"There are many who worry about him," Cas says. "He is headed down a dangerous path, and there are many who will stop him if he does not stop himself."

Dean knows exactly what Cas means by stop him, and he doesn't want his brother to be killed by angels. "What can I do? He won't listen to me. Ruby's gotten to him, I just don't know why."

"Ruby knows."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Thank you, Captain Obvious."

Cas's forehead crinkles into a frown. "I'm not a captain."

"It was a reference that obviously you wouldn't get, because you never get any of my references."

"Ah," Cas says but he doesn't look any more enlightened. "What I was trying to tell you is that if you want to know Ruby's intentions for Sam then you should ask Ruby."

"What and she'd just tell me hell's nefarious plans for my brother?" Dean flops down on his bed. "I can see that conversation going over well."

"Dean," Cas hesitates and that gets Dean's attention, because Cas is never delicate about anything. He's even more worried when Cas looks past him at the wall instead of meeting his eyes. "If you were determined, you could coax the answers from her."

Dean's blood runs cold for a moment. Cas isn't suggesting, he couldn't possibly be, but he is. Dean closes his eyes, and all he can see is Alastair. The sharp curve of his smirk, his smug victory as Dean accepted the knife, as Dean walked up to his first victim.

"I'm not sure I can do that," Dean says. "I'm not sure I'd come out of it in one piece." Not that he's exactly put together right now anyway. He'd come out of hell broken, wounds that refused to heal, memories that refused to be buried, and he has no one that can help him. He doesn't know how to turn to Sam or Clint and broach the subject of hell and torture and how Dean had put himself over other people, how he had learned to torture and been damn good at it. Taught by hell's best.

"You are the strongest person I know," Cas says.

Dean laughs, short and deprecating. "I feel bad for you then, because I'm pathetic. It only took thirty years to break me. I'm supposed to protect people Cas, and I broke them instead."

"You did what you had to to survive."

The worst part about having an argument with Cas, Dean reflects as he imagines all the ways he'd like to kill the angel, is that he always means everything he says. He doesn't lie, and he doesn't say anything that he doesn't believes with all of his being, and that makes it really hard to be angry with him. Or to successfully sway his opinion.

"I should've been stronger."

"Perhaps you needed to learn a skill for a later time in your life."

Dean opens his eyes to glare, because that sounds way too close to 'everything happens for a reason' and he doesn't want excuses, and he doesn't want a lecture on fate or other things outside his control. As much as he'd like to shove his guilt off on a higher power or an ineffable plan, he can't. He has to take ownership of it.

"I have upset you," Cas says, a statement more than a question. "I apologize."

"It's not your fault," Dean says. "I'm the one who couldn't hold out long enough."

Cas hesitantly sits down on the far corner of Dean's bed. "I regret that I did not reach you sooner. No one should have to suffer as you have."

Dean sighs and pulls a pillow over his face. "Can we talk about something besides my time in hell?"

Cas is silent for a long moment. "Did you know that I am the angel of Thursday?"

Dean sits up. "Really? Thursday?"

* * *

Sam comes back, his eyes shining and a hard set to his jaw. Dean knows immediately where he's been.

"I don't want to talk about it," Sam snaps before Dean can even open his mouth.

Dean holds up his hands. "Wasn't going to say anything, but you're obviously in a shitty mood. I'm going to take a walk."

Sam frowns. "You don't take walks."

And you used to be a good kid, Dean thinks but doesn't say. Instead he shrugs and heads out the door. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and his fingers brush against his cell phone.

He pulls it out as he heads down the darkened road.

Dean: What's SHIELD's policy on torture?

Clint: We do what's necessary. Why?

Dean: Have you ever?

Clint: I'm the guy they call in for the kill, not for the questions. Everything okay?

Dean: Fine. Sam and I are debating ethics of war

Clint: You're ridiculous. And it's late. You should be sleeping

Dean ignores the last text and kicks a few loose stones as he travels further and further away from the motel. There's nothing down this part of the highway except for trees and a guardrail. The more he walks, the more he loses the lighting of the motel sign, the more he gets swallowed up by the darkness.

_We do what's necessary_.

Dean breaks into a jog, and he goes until he's lungs are burning, and he can barely see the flicker of the neon lights. There's a curve just ahead, and if he keeps going he'll lose the motel completely.

He stops where he is and turns his face up the sky. "Cas, I need your help."

He feels stupid talking to the sky, but he doesn't know what else to do.

"I am here," Cas says and he lays a hand on Dean's shoulder. "I will always be here when you call. What do you need?"

Dean turns to face Cas, and as he pushes Cas's hand off his shoulder, he finds his fingers lacing with Cas's, and he squeezes, a desperate need for something he can't name.

"We need to catch ourselves a demon."

Cas nods solemnly. "I will assist you. And Dean?" His free hand cups Dean's cheek, his thumb brushing away the tear leaking from Dean's eye. "I am sorry it has come to this."

"Me too," Dean says.

* * *

Getting Ruby is easier than Dean had expected; though, he knows better than to think that anything will be easy from here on out. She's hanging from the ceiling of a warehouse in rope that's been soaked in saltwater. Her ankles are tied as well and latched to rings on the ground to keep her body still so Dean can work.

There's a devil's trap on the ceiling and floor, and Cas is standing just inside the door in case there are any problems. Dean doesn't want him here watching this, but he doesn't want to risk Ruby getting free.

Sam is working with Bobby on a case involving a shower-spirit. Dean had called Bobby and asked him to take Sam on a case, because Dean had some work to do. Neither of them know what he's up to, and he feels guilty for deceiving them, but not as guilty as he does for what he's about to do.

He really hopes that he's right, and Ruby has some good information or he might break into too many pieces to be fitted back together again. And that's only if Sam doesn't kill him first.

Dean looks over the dark haired woman he has held hostage and wonders what Sam sees in her. What can she offer him that's made him into someone Dean can barely recognize? No, these thoughts are useless. He needs to be calm, rational, emotionally detached if he's going to do this right. Alastair had taught him that emotions were weakness. He needs to be calculating, to evaluate what measures will produce the best results.

Dean picks up Ruby's knife and holds it up so she can see. "I'm not sure if I ever thanked you for giving this to us," Dean says as he approaches. Slow, even steps that she can count, anticipate. "So thank you."

He stabs the knife between the veins in her wrist. She clamps down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming, and Dean twists the knife.

"I hope you don't try the stoic act for long," Dean says leaving the knife sticking out of her flesh as he goes back to his table. "I have questions I want answered, and I'm on a bit of a schedule. Though, maybe I'll keep you all strung up until Sam gets back, and see who's side he's ultimately on."

Ruby's eyes flicker with hellfire as she glares at him. "That's what this is? You're throwing a tantrum, because your brother likes me better?"

Dean's lips pull back into a poor imitation of a smile. He picks up a bag of salt and heads back over to her. "No, I want answers. What are your plans with my brother?"

Ruby laughs. "You honestly expect that I'm going to tell you?"

"Oh, darling," Dean says, pulling the knife out, "You're going to tell me everything."

He sprinkles salt over the fresh wound, and she bites through her lip with the effort it takes not to scream.

* * *

In the end, Ruby probably doesn't tell Dean everything, but she tells him more than he thought she would. He hadn't realized the extent of hell's machinations before, but he certainly does now, and it takes all the self-control he has not to stab the bitch through the heart with her own knife.

Ruby's training Sam to take on Lilith, but also so that Sam can break the last seal and thus break Lucifer free of his cage. Apparently Sam is destined to be Lucifer's vessel, the human he uses to bring on the apocalypse. There's no way Dean's going to let that happen.

He and Sam are going to kill Lilith before she becomes the last seal, and they're definitely not going to kill her near any convents. And now, thanks to Ruby, he knows where Lilith is going to be shacking up for the next week.

Dean's washing his hands in the sink when his pocket buzzes. He quickly dries his hands and pulls his phone out.

"Where the hell are you?" Sam demands. "Bobby and I are at the motel but all your stuff is gone."

"Cas is coming to get you," Dean says and Cas nods before disappearing. "Did your hunt go well?"

"Yeah, we," Sam's voice cuts out but then Sam and Bobby are standing in front of Dean. "It did." Sam frowns and looks around the dingy room. "Where are we? What's going on?"

Dean's eyes flick toward the door that separates them from Ruby. "I've been talking with Ruby."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Talking?"

Dean shrugs. "Some other stuff mixed in. I managed to catch her in a chatty mood. She's not your friend, Sam."

Sam's shoulders shake with the effort it takes him not to walk away, or punch Dean in the face. "She told you that?"

Dean's smile is full of sharp white teeth, and he notices Bobby take a step back. "The only thing she hasn't lied about is that she wants you to kill Lilith."

"Well, I want to kill Lilith so we're a good match." Sam crosses his arms over his chest, preparing for a fight.

"We will kill her," Dean says, "but we're not following Ruby's plan. Ruby's plan ends with Lucifer rising from hell and possessing you." Sam's mouth falls open and Dean presses his advantage. "We're hunting Lilith as soon as you're ready, Sam. We're finding her, and we're killing her, and we're not going to trigger the apocalypse in the process."

Sam's mouth opens and closes for a few moments as he processes. "What? How? Ruby said the only way to kill Lilith is for me to get stronger."

"So you will." Dean ignores the surprise on Sam's face. "I have a demon full of blood waiting for you to drink. Will you need more than one?"

Dean's aware of Bobby reaching toward his back pocket where he keeps a vial of holy water, just in case, and he's aware of Cas standing silently to the side, watching the proceedings without judgment or pity. He's also aware of Sam struggling to figure out what's happened to his brother.

"I thought you were against the demon blood."

"I am," Dean says walking toward the door, "but sometimes we do what's necessary to win."

He throws the door open, and Sam takes a cautious step forward. Dean knows the moment he sees Ruby, hanging in the ropes, her body cut and bruised and even burned in some places. Sam's head snaps to the side, mouth falling open.

"Will you need more than one demon?" Dean repeats.

Sam slowly shakes his head.

"Good, I want to get on the road as soon as possible. Use her knife to slit her throat or her wrist or wherever you prefer to feed from but don't press too deep. It wouldn't do for you to kill the demon before you can drink its blood. If you don't mind, I'm not going to watch the actual blood drinking."

Dean walks back to the front door of the factory, not waiting to see if Sam's going to move. He knows Sam will. Dean leans his head against the single window on the door and hopes that this works. He and Cas had talked after they wrung all the useful information they could out of Ruby. There are plans for a battle to take place between heaven and hell with Earth as the battlefield and humans as the casualties. Dean has no desire for that to take place, and he's going to do everything in his power to stop it from happening.

"Son," Bobby says, his hand heavy on Dean's shoulder.

Dean shrugs off Bobby's hand. "I don't deserve that."

"No," Bobby agrees. "You probably don't. What you did back there," Bobby shudders and he's so close that Dean can feel it, "that's dark, Dean."

"I know."

"Why?"

Dean presses his forehead harder against the cool pane of glass and looks out at the sun that's beginning to poke its way above the trees. He'd lost track of time locked in the windowless room with Ruby. He'd forgotten that the night was passing and that day would come again. He wants to push the door open and feel the sun on his skin, but he doesn't move.

"She's a demon, Bobby. She wanted nothing good with Sam, and I got tired of the cryptic hints people keep dropping and the doubt and the not knowing, and I wanted to find out what she wanted before she broke him so completely that I wouldn't be able to put him back together."

"And you?" Bobby asks. "Can you be put back together?"

The sun hits the glass, but Dean can't feel it, the glass is too thick. He turns away from the window and toward Bobby who is watching him with concern from under his baseball cap. "I came back broken. This," he motions towards the room with Ruby. "This isn't anything new for me."

Bobby's eyes fill with understanding then pity, and Dean has to walk away.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: My new OTP makes its appearance.

Warnings: None except for strong language.

* * *

Dean: On my way to try and prevent the apocalypse. Wish me luck

Clint: You don't need luck. You have an angel on your side

Dean: Turns out there are even more on the other side

Clint: What?

Dean: I'll explain later

Clint: Okay. Good luck

Clint puts his phone away and peers over the edge of his roost. Down below, Selvig is still puttering around the Tesseract, and his guards are still standing at attention. This gig is boring, mostly silence except for the occasional whine from the blue cube and the occasional curse from Selvig.

He knows this is serious, that the Tesseract holds the power to defend the Earth against virtually any foe, and that's what keeps him awake and alert, but it doesn't keep him interested. He's playing babysitter to an obsessive scientist and a mystical blue cube of energy.

He'd made a joke about the Animorphs when he first got here, about blue cubes that come from aliens, but no one had even cracked a smile so he'd climbed up to a high perch and settled in for a boring assignment. He alternates between imagining that the cube is Andolite technology that has given Clint the ability to turn into a hawk and texting Dean.

Though Dean's apparently going to take on the Apocalypse so he won't be around to distract Clint from death by boredom. Some people get all the fun.

* * *

"I can't believe we're going with your plan," Sam says, for the eighth time as they pull the Impala up in front of a small two story house in the middle of suburbia.

"It worked for Captain America," Dean points out as he gets out of the car. "Knock on the front door and then kill everyone."

"You remember that in the end his ship goes down and he dies, right?"

Dean slams the car door shut and glares at Sam around the windshield. "Do you want to kill Lilith or what?"

Sam shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. "Of course I want her dead. I'm just worried about you."

Dean rolls his eyes. Sam cannot possibly want to talk right now. They're about to storm Lilith's fortress, okay, her modestly sized house, and kill her. This isn't the time to talk.

"We can hug it out later," Bobby says taking Dean's side. "We're working with the element of surprise and stupid, and if we lose the element of surprise then we're screwed. Come on, time to go knock on the demon's door."

"Who is Captain America?" Cas asks.

"I'll introduce you to superheroes later," Dean says. Dean refuses to believe that Captain America's actually dead. They made a movie about him a year or two ago, and his ship went down, but if you stayed after the credits then there was this brief clip where you saw him resting peacefully in a coffin of ice looking like a Disney Princess, waiting for someone to come and wake him up.

Dean likes to believe that Steve Rogers was a hunter and that's why he was so fixated on tracking down the Tesseract, but Clint says that's just wishful thinking. Dean decides that once they're done stopping the apocalypse he and Cas are going to track down and find Captain America, wherever he might be buried, and they're going to add him to their rag tag group of hunters. Or maybe just drink some beers and talk about the strange shit they've all seen. The world has to take a break from evil after the apocalypse is averted, right?

Dean leads their merry group of four up the porch steps—really, she has a porch, and a rocking chair?—and rings the doorbell. He holds Ruby's knife behind his back, and he can sense Bobby shifting, getting ready to pull the Colt out, and Dean grins. Time to go kick some demon ass.

The door opens and a young boy with Bieber bangs sweeping dramatically across his forehead frowns at them. And then he recognizes who's standing on his front porch, and his mouth drops.

Dean lunges, driving Ruby's knife through his chest before he can react. The demon crackles out and the body drops to the floor at Dean's feet.

Dean steps over it and into the house. "Honey, I'm home!" he calls out.

Several things happen in rapid succession. Dean's thrown against the nearest wall, but he falls to the floor as soon as Cas touches his fingers to the attacking demon's head. Another demon thunders down the stairs only to be met with a bullet to the brain courtesy of the Colt. Two more demons rush them, but between the knife and the Colt they don't get too close.

And then Team Stop the Apocalypse is standing in the foyer with several bodies lying at their feet.

"I didn't expect you so soon," Lilith's lilting voice drifts through the hall, and her footsteps are soft as they round the corner.

She's in a new body from last time, a teenage girl with braces and thick rimmed glasses balanced precariously on her nose. She looks young, innocent, until you see her eyes. They're haunted with worries far deeper than next week's math quiz and this week's crush.

"We're a fan of surprise parties," Dean says, readjusting his grip on Ruby's knife.

Lilith laughs and tosses him against the far wall with a flick of her wrist. The knife clatters uselessly to the floor. "Haven't you learned your lesson? You can't kill me. None of your toys will affect me." A flick of her other wrist sends Bobby crashing into the family portraits that were hanging on the wall. The Colt drops at Cas's feet.

"Weapons are not toys," Cas says.

"Go on," Lilith says nodding at the gun. "Pick it up and try and shoot me. Or, better yet, try and exorcise me angel-boy. See how well you do."

Cas shrugs and leaves the Colt where it is. "I'm not the secret weapon."

"You certainly aren't. But really, didn't you learn your lesson last time you tried to ambush me? Nothing you have can kill me."

"We've learned a few things since then," Sam says, reaching a hand out.

Lilith rolls her eyes. "Please, Sam. You don't have the juice to take me out."

"Really?" Dean wheezes, clawing ineffectually at the invisible hand wrapped around his neck. He kicks his feet for good measure but it doesn't help. "And here I thought draining Ruby would be enough."

The first bit of fear flickers in Lilith's eyes. "You killed Ruby?"

Dean grins. "Had a little fun first. You demons scream real pretty when tortured, you know that?"

Lilith hisses and presses the invisible hand tighter into Dean's throat. He chokes, his fingers scrambling against his own neck, trying to release the pressure. Sam better hurry the hell up, because Dean would really like to make it out of this fight alive. He's looking forward to the after party.

"Stop," Sam commands and he starts pulling Lilith out of the girl's body. "Ruby told us everything," he says, his face screwing up in concentration as he pits his will against Lilith's. "We're not going to let you free Lucifer, and I'm sure as hell not going to invite him into my body. We're putting an end to all of this."

Sam drags her out bit by bit, but he's starting to get fatigued, and he's not sure he's going to be able to win this. No, he is. He has to do this. It's hell on Earth if he doesn't. He can feel his pulse pounding in his brain, he can feel something trickling out his nose, but he pushes his discomfort aside and concentrates.

Dean feels Lilith's grip loosening, but Sam's looking like this fight is going to kill him. As soon as Dean drops to the floor he makes a dive for the Colt, and he starts firing off bullets. Lilith's body jerks and convulses, and the demon doesn't burn out, but with one last grunt, Sam yanks her out, and the black smoke sizzles and burns in front of them.

"Shit," Dean says, collapsing on the floor. He can't believe they'd done it. They'd averted the apocalypse. Who needs freaking Captain America when you've got Dean Winchester?

Dean: Screw the Avengers and the Justice League and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four and all those prissy superhero clubs. Three humans and an angel just stopped the apocalypse

Clint: About the Avengers….It's more than just a comic book theory

Dean: What?

Clint: Come on, you follow the news, right? Iron Man's real. The Hulk's real. Captain America's been pulled out of the ice

Dean: WHAT?

Dean looks up from his phone. "Captain America is alive, and I stopped the apocalypse! Best day ever!" He pumps his fist at the ceiling.

Sam shakes his head and wipes the blood from his nose. "I think you hit your head a little too hard against the wall

Clint: Explain later, my boss is here. Congrats on saving the world

* * *

The after party had lasted for an entire day. Even Cas made a valiant effort to get wasted though, as usual, that failed.

Dean's recovering from the worst hangover of his life by casually sipping a beer and watching TV, wondering what the hell he's supposed to do now that they've averted the apocalypse. Everything's going to seem so boring now.

He's flipping channels when he sees something weird on the news, and he flips back. Oh yeah, the headlines definitely just said something about aliens. The cameras zoom in on this weird blue portal looking thing that's raised above the Stark Tower, and there are definitely things flying out of it.

"Uh guys," Dean says. "Guys, I think we're needed. There's an alien invasion."

"Would you go see a doctor about your head?" Sam asks.

"I'm serious," Dean says and there's an urgency in his voice that makes everyone leave what they're doing in the kitchen and rush over to him. Dean points needlessly at the TV where the cameras are now showing ugly looking alien dudes shooting at people with blue magic light weapons.

"Shit," Bobby says. He touches his hands to the back of his head. His stitches are barely holding He can't deal with aliens right now.

"I was looking forward to some time off," Sam says.

"I can bring us there are soon as you're ready," Cas says.

Dean finishes his beer. "Let's grab some weapons from the Impala and go." He stands up and his brain hits against the sides of his head. "And some Advil."

* * *

Tony's standing in a circle with the rest of the Avengers, and they're all facing out, looking at the swarms of Chi'tauri. Tony has no idea how they're going to win this, but he's determined that they will. There's six of them and who only knows how many of the Chi'tauri, but the Avengers are much better looking and that's half the battle.

"Orders, Cap?" Tony asks.

Steve opens his mouth to speak when there's a crackle of electricity, and everyone turns to Thor, but Thor is pointing to the sky. Ten feet above them, a man in a tan trench coat is slowly descending, each of his arms wrapped around a young man.

Trench coat's feet touch the ground, and he looks at the Avengers, his blue eyes full of seriousness. "Behold, I am Castiel, angel of the Lord."

"I do not have time for this shit," Tony says. "We kill them."

"Dean?" Clint asks once he gets over the fact that holy shit there are guys dropping out of the sky, and what is Dean doing here? And why is Dean wearing shotgun rounds like they're a fashion accessory, and why is he holding a shotgun, and why is he even here?

Dean stops gaping at the people they've dropped in on because holy shit that's the Avengers, and he grins at Clint. "Turned on the news and saw you had a problem." He loads and cocks his shotgun. "We specialize in handling problems."

"These are friends of yours?" Steve asks turning to Clint.

Clint matches Dean's grin. "We're still waiting for our orders, Cap. I don't think the Chi'tauri are going to give us much time to plan."

Steve snaps back to attention. Mission. Duty. People to protect. He starts issuing orders, and the Avengers begin following. He hesitates a moment as he looks at the newcomers before deciding, what the hell. He'll take allies where he can get them.

"Dean, I want you on ground duty clearing the area around Stark Tower. Kid with the Colt," Steve pauses and a completely inappropriate smile lights up his face, "hey, that gun's older than me." Steve shakes himself and refocuses. "I want you with Natasha. And Castiel, I have no idea what you're capable of so just kill things."

Castiel gives a solemn bow. "I will do as you have ordered."

* * *

"You brought civilians to help?" Tony demands through the comm. system as they take their positions. "Are you serious, Clint?"

Clint tell whether Tony's actually worried about them or pissed that there are people here to take away some of his glory. "I didn't invite them. They just have a knack for finding trouble."

"I can't babysit them," Tony says. "I have actual work to do."

"Holy shit," Natasha breathes. "By the bank, trench coat guy is about to bite it."

Everyone's attention turns to where Castiel is now standing on the nose of a space whale. He reaches out and touches the alien between its eyes, and it begins to dissolve beneath his feet. He teleports away before he goes plummeting to the ground.

"Holy something," Steve says reverence in his tone.

"I take it back," Tony says and even he sounds shaken. "Clint, you have awesome friends."

Clint grins and puts an arrow through a Chi'tauri.

* * *

It takes Dean less than five minutes to lose his gun so he does the rational thing. He jumps one of the ugly aliens and wraps his shotgun round belt around its neck and yanks until it drops to the ground.

He picks up the weird blue stick-gun thing. He points at another one of the aliens, and it fires, and the recoil almost sends Dean flying into a busted up car.

Dean grins and twirls the weapon in his hands. This fight just got fun.

* * *

At the end of the fight, the Avengers, the Winchesters, and Cas end up in the Avengers Tower looking down at Loki. Everyone is looking threatening except Cas who is dusting ash off his trench coat.

"I don't think he's going anywhere," Tony says after a long moment. Loki smiles brightly at him. Just to be safe, Thor puts his hammer on Loki's chest to weigh him down.

"Oh hey," Sam says, pointing to Thor. "We almost killed him."

Thor looks over at the puny humans and laughs. "You could've tried."

"They were going to burn down every tree in Scandinavia to do it," Clint says. "I'm glad we're all on the same side."

"Wait," Natasha says, getting a good look at Sam and Dean for the first time. "These are the Winchester brothers."

Dean gives Sam a 'we're famous' grin. Sam gives him a 'we're so screwed' frown.

"Should I know them?" Tony asks. "Why do you know them?"

"I thought they were dead," Natasha says, ignoring Tony. The question is directed at Clint, but he just sits down on the stairs, starting to feel how much of a beating his body had taken now that the adrenaline is wearing off.

Dean flashes her a smile. "We get that a lot. So you guys are the Avengers, huh? I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed."

Clint groans as he leans back. "You never know when to keep your mouth shut, do you?"

Dean grins and waggles his eyebrows. Clint picks up a piece of rubble and chucks it at him.

"Eww, would you two stop flirting?" Sam asks. "I'm right here! Cas will you take me home? Or them somewhere else?"

Sam turns to see Cas two inches from Captain America. Cas is almost an entire head shorter than him, but he reaches up to traces the wings on the Captain's mask.

"You have wings," Cas says before moving to trace the A on Steve's forehead. "Do you fight for the angels?"

Steve's eyes widen. "Do I—do I what?"

"Okay," Tony says reaching out to pull Cas out of Steve's personal space, because only he's allowed to make Steve look that terrified and uncomfortable. His fingers don't even touch the man in the trench coat—he's still hesitant to call him an angel—before Tony is flying toward the other end of the Tower.

Cas ignores the fact that he's just sent Iron Man flying and that all the Avengers have weapons trained on him. He simply presses his hand over Steve's wound.

"You are an honorable and virtuous man," Cas says, the skin healing beneath his touch. "I am," Cas pauses, tilts his head to the side, "I am proud to protect humanity when it produces people such as yourself."

Sam nudges Dean and whispers quietly, "Is Cas flirting?"

"I'm not sure whether I should be horrified or proud," Dean whispers back.

Steve doesn't know whether to smile or thank him or hug him or drop to his knees. He's never met an angel before, never thought he'd meet an angel until he died, and he doesn't know what to do so he just stares.

Cas stares back.

Tony clears his throat having made his way back to where the rest were. "So, uh, obviously you did some pretty impressive shit back there, but I'm still not believing you're an angel. Supposedly these guys," Tony jerks his thumb towards Thor and Loki, "are gods, but they're not. Just aliens. So, what realm are you from?"

Cas turns away from Steve to fix Tony with the most unnerving stare Tony has ever been on the receiving end of. "I am an angel of the Lord. I do not understand why humans have such a difficult time believing."

"What are you an angel of anyways?" Tony asks. "Tax accountants?"

Everyone but Cas cracks a smile. "Thursdays," Cas says completely serious.

"You do not mean Thorsday," Thor says standing up. He towers over Cas. "That is my day."

Cas meets Thor's stare unflinchingly. "I am the angel of Thursday. I do not lie."

Thor growls and lightning sparks from his fingertips. Cas reaches out and touches Thor's forehead. He collapses to the ground and immediately Natasha empties her gun into Cas's heart.

Cas looks down at the holes in his clothes. "I will have to replace these now."

"What he means to say," Sam says hurriedly before the Avengers try and kill an angel, "is that Thor's fine. He put him to sleep, because he doesn't understand how to interact with human beings."

"He's only been on Earth for six months," Dean explains. "He hasn't quite gotten down how not to be a giant dick."

"A man out of time," Tony says. "We've got ourselves one of those." He looks over at Steve whose eyes are flicking between Thor and Cas, a look of awe on his face. "Apparently ours is a fan of yours."

"He's a buzz kill," Dean says. "Can't get drunk, tries to analyze porn, and, believe it or not, is a righteous pain in the ass."

Tony looks back at Cas and Steve with something akin to fear. "Maybe we shouldn't let them hang out. They'll make each other worse." Tony sticks out a hand. "I'm Tony Stark."

"Dean Winchester." Dean shakes his hand. "Nice suit."

The lights in Tower flicker, and when they're bright again, there's someone standing over Loki looking murderous.

"Trickster?" Sam and Dean ask.

"Gabriel?" Castiel asks.

Gabriel turns around and sighs when he sees the Winchesters and Cas. "Of course you'd be here. Yes, hello to you, I'm not here for you, surprise world doesn't revolve around you."

"You're here for Loki?" Thor asks groggily. Apparently angel sleep doesn't last long against Norse gods.

"Loki," Gabriel's lips twist into a sneer. "I'm here for the one who claims to be Loki. I've spent centuries cultivating the perfect persona. I'm mischievous but not malevolent and that's a fine line to walk and then this guy," Gabriel jabs his finger at Loki's chest, "goes and blows all that hard work in a couple days."

"Claims?" Loki splutters speaking for the first time since his capture. He tries to wriggle out from beneath Thor's hammer. "I am Loki, you fool."

Gabriel's face freezes for a moment. "Truth?" He touches his hand to Loki's forehead, and when he pulls back his eyes are wide. "You are. I suppose I owe you an apology then. Seems that I have been impersonating you."

Loki glowers. "No one can impersonate me."

"Oh really?" Gabriel taps his fingers against his chin. "Let's see. I have an absent father who could care less about me, I have an older brother obsessed with his destiny, the golden child that everyone adores, and how am I doing so far? We sound similar?"

Loki glares as best he can, pinned by his enemies with his brother's hammer.

"Yes, yes," Gabriel says with a wave of his hand. "Be as angry as you want. Why don't I make it up to you? We can take a vacation, talk out our brother issues, maybe even our daddy issues if we get drunk enough. Terrorize a few towns, have some fun. Now that there's not going to be an apocalypse, my schedule's free."

"You can't kidnap our prisoner," Tony says.

Gabriel gives him a patronizing smile. "Actually I can, but I'm not a total dick so I'll give you a consolation prize."

He grins and disappears with Loki, leaving the hammer resting on the ground, and Agent Coulson standing where Gabriel had been.

"Holy shit you're alive," Clint says before throwing himself at Coulson.

The Avengers descend on the agent and Sam and Dean turn on Cas.

"The trickster is an angel?" Sam hisses.

Cas looks at them with his usual blank expression but this one seems to say 'you're both idiots'. "He is the archangel Gabriel."

"Talk about abuse of power," Dean mutters.

"It is a plea for attention," Cas says. "He is directly related to Michael, Raphael, and Lucifer. With those three as brothers, it is easy to be overlooked."

"I can't handle angel drama right now," Sam says. "We prevented the apocalypse and then saved the world from aliens. I think we deserve a break. A real break this time."

"Agreed," Dean says. "Cas, you ready to head to the hospital to check on Bobby? He's going to be pissed that he missed this."

"Hey," Tony shouts as the Winchesters pick their weapons up off the ground. "Where do you think you're going? We just saved the freaking world. We're partying tonight."


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Everything is good and nothing hurts! Aka, everyone gets a happy ending. There is more Steve/Cas, because this pairing really started to grow on me. Also, this is officially over 50k which should clearly count as this November's NaNo.

A/N: Thank you to everyone for your support. Writing Avengers fic while watching TV has led to some interesting crossovers, and I'm glad I wasn't alone in thinking Dean/Clint could be interesting.

* * *

Dean knew from TV that Tony Stark could throw a party, but there was a difference between seeing E! clips of a Stark shindig and actually being at one. Dean feels underdressed in his jeans and leather jacket, but he does have a maroon button up underneath it so he's at least making an attempt.

"This is a little more posh than we're used to," Sam whispers edging closer to Bobby and Dean as they take in the lighting, the bar, the balcony pool, and Tony's slick black suit.

Bobby rolls up the sleeves of his plaid flannel. "If it means they have good alcohol, I don't care what they're wearing. Thanks for breaking me out of the hospital for this."

"You would've killed us if we hadn't," Sam says.

Bobby grins. "Damn straight." He tips his baseball cap to them and heads over to the bar for a stiff drink.

"And then there were two," Sam mutters. He looks around, frowning as he doesn't see any sign of a tan trench coat. "Where did Cas go?"

"Probably off playing with soldier boy."

Sam's eyebrows scrunch together. "Like _playing_?"

"Ew!" Dean shouts, shoving Sam. "Why would you say that? Why would you put that in my head? He's like my son and my little brother and my guardian angel rolled into one. He has no sex drive. None. Zero." Dean shakes his head trying to get the imagine of Cas having sex out of his head. That's probably blasphemous, and any moment now he's going to get smited. Smoted? Smit? Smitten? Hell, he's going to get blown up.

"Sorry," Sam says holding his hands up. Dean overreacts to everything. "Wait. Did you say little brother? You think I don't have a sex drive?"

"Unfortunately, I know that you do. You also have terrible taste in women."

"Like you're any better."

Dean shrugs, conceding the point, and then he spots Clint on the other side of the room and he can't help his smile. "But I've got fantastic taste in men."

Sam says something, probably unkind, but Dean isn't listening, because Clint's eyes meet his across the room, and his face breaks into a brilliant smile, and Dean can't concentrate on anything else. He starts toward Clint, not really caring whether Sam follows or not.

"Congrats on saving the world," Dean says, giving Clint's shoulder a light punch.

"Well, you did it twice in one week." Clint gives Dean an easy smile, and he reaches out a hand to touch Dean's arm, because he still can't believe that Dean is here. Dean is here, and Loki's spell has been broken, and the world is still in one piece, and Clint doesn't know whether he wants to laugh or cry or sleep for the next three days.

"Oh wow," Sam breathes, and Dean doesn't like that tone. That's the 'I've just discovered a really hot girl, and I'm about to be stupid' tone.

Dean follows Sam's gaze to the left where Natasha's just appeared, a light robe wrapped delicately around her body. It's a cover-up so the hem barely skims mid thigh, and Sam is shamelessly staring at miles of long, smooth leg as she walks toward the pool.

"Oh no," Dean counters. "Absolutely not."

Clint laughs when he sees who Sam's checking out. "Good luck kid. She'll eat you alive."

Dean groans. "Now you've done it."

"Done what?" Clint frowns at Dean, and when he doesn't say anything he turns to Sam. He's slack jawed, now, watching at Natasha slips the robe from her body, leaving her in a few tiny scraps of material that serve as a bathing suit.

She turns over her shoulder like she knows they're talking about her, and she winks before diving smoothly into the water.

"I think I'm going to go for a swim," Sam says still not turning away from Natasha. "I'll catch you later."

Dean shakes his head as Sam ambles off to get himself into more trouble than he knows how to handle. "I hope you're not too attached to her."

"What? Why?"

"My brother seems to have a thing for evil chicks. Werewolves, demons, backstabbing bitches, you name it he wants to screw it."

Clint waves a dismissive hand. "Eh, I'm not too worried about it. I think Nat can handle herself against the Sam Winchester curse."

"You're right," Dean says. "We've just saved the world, we deserve a break from taking care of people. Let me buy you a drink."

"It's an open bar," Clint points out as they head towards the bar.

"In that case, I'll buy you as many drinks as you want."

Clint laughs and leans into Dean's shoulder for a brief moment.

* * *

"Oh, cheer up," Jane says, giving Thor's shoulder a shove. It's virtually ineffective, because she doesn't have a lot of mass behind her, and he's a pretty immovable object. "You saved Earth, the Tesseract has been returned to Asgard, and in a few months the Bifrost will be working again."

"My brother has been kidnapped, and I have encountered a new foe." Thor flicks an irritated glance back toward the door to the living room where Steve is leaning against the wall and talking to the creature that has laid claims to Thor's day.

"Castiel is not a foe," Jane says drawing on her patience reserve. They've had this conversation multiple times since she escaped the safe house and made it to Manhattan. She had difficulty at first accepting that angels were real, but if aliens and space travel were real then why not angels? "He assisted you in the fight against the Chi'tauri."

"He knows the creature that has taken Loki."

"Angel," Jane says. "They're angels, not creatures. Now, stop moping and party or I'm going to find someone who will. Tonight we're celebrating that we're all still alive. Tomorrow we can freak out about all the problems we still have."

"You are a wise woman," Thor says, giving Jane a one armed hug. "I apologize for my behavior."

Jane grins and slides into his lap. "You can apologize by getting me a drink. And promising me a dance later."

"There will be dancing?" Thor asks. "I don't know any Midgardian dances."

"I'll teach you," Jane promises.

* * *

Bobby tips his hat down lower and cradles his beer. When Dean had told him there was going to be a party with some fantastic booze he'd been all in despite the nurse's warning about drinking with a concussion, but now that he's here he's sort of regretting that he came.

He's a hunter, by nature a solitary guy, and the three people here he knows are all happily integrating themselves into this world. Well, Dean's always been loosely attached to this world and Sam's good at making friends, and even Cas has managed to corner someone, and that just leaves Bobby alone at the bar.

He feels uncomfortable being surrounded by all these government types. He knows the Avengers aren't your typical organization, but they're still working for SHIELD, and Bobby has never had a good relationship with the law. Most hunters don't which is why Bobby's still having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that Dean's gotten himself involved with a suit.

He glances over at Dean and Clint who are sitting on the far end of the bar, leaning into to each other, occasionally laughing or taking a sip of their beers. It looks natural, comfortable, and he's never seen Dean so relaxed. He might not understand how or why it happened, but he does understand that it's probably the best thing that's ever happened to Dean and that's good enough for him.

"You must be with the Winchesters." A man in a suit slides into the chair next to Bobby and offers him a bright smile. "Phil Coulson, pleasure to meet you."

Bobby looks down at the outstretched hand and wraps his fingers tighter around his beer. "I came with them."

Phil isn't fazed by Bobby's manner; though, ever since being raised from the dead he's been in a pretty jolly mood. Must be some sort of side effect. He orders a gin and tonic and settles into his stool. "I know you don't trust me which is fine, and I know more about you than you'd want me to, Bobby Singer, but I thought we should have a chat."

Bobby's eyes narrow. "How are you connected to this lot?"

"I'm Clint's handler." Phil points Clint out just in case Bobby hasn't met him. "I look after him. Much the same as you look after Sam and Dean."

Bobby laughs. "Those boys don't need looking after anymore. That's what they've got angels for." Bobby nods in Castiel's direction.

"They'll always need us," Coulson says. "Though less and less each day. I think I've got Dean to thank for that one."

Bobby takes a long drink of his beer and wishes he could go back to sitting in silence.

"He's changed Clint, you know. I came on as Clint's handler, and he was a handler's dream. He followed orders to the T, trusted me without question, pushed himself during training, and he never hesitated on a mission. I told him to jump, and he'd wait for me to say how high. Not so much anymore. He's always talked back, but now he questions. He wants to know the why behind everything. He even disobeyed orders for the first time. Turned a target instead of killing her."

"Is this the part where you're going tell me that Dean's a bad influence?" Bobby's heard it a thousand times. He's heard it from John, he's heard it from Dean's teachers the couple times he picked Sam and Dean up from various schools John had dropped them at. Bobby also knows that it's complete bullshit. Dean is loyal to a fault, completely dedicated to a cause once he's decided it's worthy, and there's no one else Bobby would rather have watching his back during a fight.

Coulson laughs. "No. This is the part where I tell you he's a damn good one. He's taught Clint how to think, and I can't thank him enough for it. Now, why don't you set that beer down and let me get you a whiskey. You seem like the kind of guy that would enjoy a good whiskey."

Bobby hesitates for a moment, but he doesn't fancy spending the rest of the night on his own, and this guy might be government, but he approves of Dean, and that makes him okay in Bobby's book.

Bobby sets his beer on the counter. "Dean's been straightening himself out. I didn't think it was Sammy's doing, and it explained a lot when I found out Dean had a secret friend stashed away. We don't have a lot of friends in our line of work."

"You're a hunter too?" Coulson asks. "Were you with them when they stopped the apocalypse?"

Bobby grins and makes himself comfortable. It's story time.

* * *

"This has been a weird week," Tony says, one arm looped easily around Pepper's waist, the other looped around Bruce's. He has an armful of beautiful woman and an armful of a blushing scientist, and the only problem he can see is that he now doesn't have any hands leftover to hold a drink. "First aliens with mind control then the Avengers Initiative happened then alien invasion and when I thought it couldn't get weirder we ended up with angels and resurrection, and Clint's been shacking up with one of the FBI's Most Wanted."

"Yes, because Clint having a boyfriend is the weirdest part of this week," Pepper says. She rolls her eyes but presses a kiss to Tony's cheek. "I'm just glad that we all made it out of this alive."

"I almost didn't."

Pepper's smile freezes for a second before she smoothes is back out. "But you did. Thanks to Bruce saving your life." She smiles at Bruce who ducks his head but not before they can see his blush.

"Thank him?" Tony asks. "What are you thanking him for? I was all set up to be a martyr, and he had to ruin it by jumpstarting my heart." Tony tsks. "No one has any respect for my plans."

Pepper frowns as she slips from Tony's grasp and moves to stand on the other side of Bruce. "I don't think you're funny."

Tony pouts. "No one ever thinks I'm funny, which is a shame, because I'm hilarious." He holds his hand out to Pepper, but she ignores it. "Aw, come on, Pep, I'm sorry. Come back?"

She twines her arms around Bruce's. "I think I'll stay with Dr Banner tonight. He's much more my type. What do you think?" She looks up at Bruce through her eyelashes, and he's trapped with Tony on one side and Pepper on the other, and really he'd rather be on an airplane back to Calcutta right now.

"I would hate to get between you two," he says diplomatically, trying to pull his arms free.

Pepper laughs and leans into him, until her mouth is brushing her ear. "That's a shame, because we were hoping you'd do just that."

Bruce's eyes widen and he looks over at Tony who nudges his knee between Bruce's legs and slowly inserts himself into Bruce's personal space.

"You interested?" Tony asks, whispering the words across Bruce's lips.

"Yeah."

* * *

Castiel transports the humans to the party, but he doesn't follow them in. He assumes that Dean will want to spend time with his human companion and that the other two will engage in celebrations that require large amounts of alcohol, and he does not want to intrude on Dean's personal time, and it is a wasted effort for him to try and get drunk.

Instead, he begins inspecting the decorations, because he has learned that how humans furnish their homes speaks to their character and their lifestyle. For example, the Sam and Dean travel from motel to motel, but they always hide their weapons in the same places. They each keep a gun under their pillows, and a knife in the bedside drawer alongside the hotel Bible. Neither of them unpack their bags, but Sam always puts his dirty clothes in a plastic bag while Dean strews his across the room.

All of these things tell Castiel important information. The Winchesters don't feel safe unless they're capable of defending themselves, they always have a back-up plan in case the original one doesn't work, and Sam is more cautious with his belongings unlike Dean who opens himself up and flings himself in all directions and sometimes this causes him to forget a sock in their rush to leave their motel room.

There are two couches in the living room, one with three cushions and another with two, and Castiel finds it intriguing that there is no armchair like at Bobby's place. The human that inhabits this place must enjoy physical contact. Castiel wonders at the meaning behind the pillows. There are no indentations to suggest that someone has laid their head on them. Why have pillows if you are not going to use them?

"The party's in the other room, you know."

Castiel turns at the sound, and he spies the human that had intrigued him earlier. Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. Castiel's eyes widen, because this is the man Dean had modeled their assault on Lilith's home after.

"It is an honor to meet you," Castiel says. Steve has changed out of his uniform which saddens Castiel, because he had enjoyed seeing the wings on the sides of his helm, but he has a much better view of the man's face now so perhaps it is not a total loss.

"Ah." Steve's smile falters slightly. "You've heard about me."

"You had the A because you are Captain America. Dean has seen your movie. We were able to prevent the apocalypse because of you."

Steve laughs and shakes his head even as a slight blush rises on his cheeks. "I'm sure it took a little more than watching a WW2 action flick to prevent the apocalypse."

"Well, yes," Castiel says as if that was obvious. "It took demon magic, the Colt, and Ruby's knife, but our plan was modeled after you. We walked up to Lilith's front door and knocked. I admit that I was surprised when it worked."

Steve doesn't understand a lot of what Castiel just said like how this person named Lilith had anything to do with the apocalypse, but he smiles anyways. "Sometimes the direct approach is best."

"That is something Dean has taught me. He wanted to go find you. It was going to be our next mission after averting the apocalypse, but you had already been found."

Steve's seen and heard a lot of thing that he's had difficulty believing since he came out of the ice, but this tops the list. An angel had wanted to lead a search and rescue for him?

"I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

Castiel smiles and he reaches out his hand so that his fingertips brush Steve's cheekbone. "You are much more than that."

Castiel drops his hand so that he can trace the line of Steve's jaw and the curve of his ear, the pads of his fingers dragging over Steve's skin and memorizing every inch.

"Do not forget to breathe," Castiel says, his thumb trailing down the shell of Steve's ear. "Humans die without proper oxygen."

Steve laughs, and he drags in a choked breath. "Yes, breathing is very important. Uh, is there any reason you're doing this?"

Castiel cups Steve's face in both his hands now and his thumbs sweep across Steve's cheeks. "Humans fascinate me, but Dean will not permit me to touch him like this. Oh." Castiel pauses and he starts to pull back. "I should have asked permission. I apologize, I am still growing accustomed to being around humans. May I touch you?"

Steve's heart stutters as those blue eyes train on his, watching him so intently that he's afraid he's going to forget to breathe again. All of Castiel's attention is focused on him, waiting for Steve's answer, and Steve feels like they're the only two people on the planet right now.

He also misses the touch of palm to his skin so he guides Castiel's hands back to his face. "You may."

A smile tugs at the corners of Castiel's mouth and his eyes crinkle with pleasure. "All of you?"

Steve's hands tighten their hold on Castiel's. "Oh wow."

Castiel tilts his head to the side. "Is that a yes?"

Steve nods. "That's a definite yes."

* * *

Clint and Dean spend the first part of the evening drinking at the bar together, not saying much, just sitting close enough that they can feel the other there and thinking about all that's happened in the past few days.

They don't get a lot of time to sit and be by themselves, because people from SHIELD start showing up, and they want to congratulate Clint on stopping the Chi'tauri or offer their apologies—it took three apologies before Clint told Dean that he'd been possessed for most of the invasion which Dean is still pissed about, because it should've been the first thing Clint told him—and once people get close enough to see Clint's friend they freak out, because apparently it's a well known fact that Dean's wanted by the FBI. Go figure.

"You need these?" Martin offers, dangling a set of handcuffs off her fingers. She's the latest in the parade of people who are wondering why the Winchesters are casually enjoying the Avengers after party, and Dean's hoping she'll be the last. He really wants to get back to convincing Clint that he's not responsible for anything that happened while he was possessed.

"No thanks," Dean says with a grin. "We've already got a pair stashed in the bedroom."

He winks and she laughs and gives Clint a little 'you go' nudge.

"Stop that," Clint says smacking Dean's shoulder. "I work with these people."

"Then they should already know all your dirty little secrets. So agent, what embarrassing stories can you tell me about Clint?"

"I could fill a whole night with them, but it sounds like you boys have something better planned. You going to christen your new room?"

"How do you already know about that?" Clint asks.

"Your new room?" Dean looks from Martin to Clint. "You're moving?"

Martin gives a little wave and shuffles away, leaving Clint alone to field Dean's question. "Tony invited all the Avengers to live in the tower, and I didn't see a reason to say no. No one else did either."

"This tower?" Dean looks from the personal bar to the balcony pool. "I guess there are worse places you could live."

"And I've probably lived in them." Clint curls one hand around the neck of his beer and rests the other on Dean's leg. "Tony's a decent guy once you get past the ego, and since we're going to be a team now Fury figured it'd be best if we all shacked up together."

He's making a home for himself, and Dean doesn't know why that doesn't sit easily with him. He should be happy that Clint's found himself a new family, one that he's not going to have to track down and kill. One that's going to be there to watch his back and hold him up when he needs them to. But part of him, a shameful part, is upset that Clint's found new people, and Dean can't help but wonder if that means he won't need Dean anymore. Now that he has all these people he's living with, that he'll see on a day to day basis, will he still want the occasional phone call from Dean?

"Hey," Clint says, leaning in, his hand a steady pressure on Dean's leg. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Dean says putting a smile on his face. "Of course I am. I'm still trying to process this whole team of superheroes thing. I can't believe you're a superhero."

Clint rolls his eyes. "I'm not a superhero."

"Not yet," Dean agrees, "but once that spandex suit I ordered comes in, you'll definitely be one."

"You're an idiot," Clint says but he gives Dean's leg a squeeze after he says it.

* * *

Dean finishes his beer and looks around the room. Bobby is still talking with Clint's handler at the bar, and he is both terrified at what they could have in common and really wants to know what they're talking about.

He's searching for Cas, because he's afraid of the kind of trouble Cas could get himself into unsupervised when he's ambushed by an unexpected yawn. He hadn't realized he was tired until after he yawned, and he had to open his eyes again, and they really didn't want to open. He supposes it's only to be expected that he's tired since he pulled a double duty this week, and he'd been operating on a hangover for most of this morning.

"It's been a long day," Clint agrees as Dean covers his mouth. "Want to head to bed?"

Dean's already sliding off his bar stool. "Sound like a plan. First I have to make sure that Cas and Sam are still alive."

"You check on Cas, and I'll check on Sam, and we'll meet over there." Clint points to the doorway just to the left of the end of the bar.

"Yes sir." Dean flashes a smile before heading toward where he'd seen Cas last.

* * *

"You look a little pale," Clint says as Dean approaches him, white faced and wide eyed. "Everything okay?"

"Definitely not. Possibly. Don't eat off the kitchen table tomorrow morning. Captain America is lying naked on top of it."

"He's what?" It's Clint's turn to pale. "Steve's naked? What the hell? I thought people from the 40s were modest. Wait, Cas is naked with Steve?"

"No, thank goodness," Dean says as they head down the hallway. "Cas claims he's exploring the human body. I didn't ask questions, I just left. Let's talk about something else. Anything else. How's Sam? Is he alive?"

Clint grins. "Somewhat. Nat was trying to drown him when I showed up, but that's her way of flirting."

"And I bet he's loving every second." Dean shakes his head. "Sam would love it here."

Clint's hand pauses on his doorknob. "I'm sure he could stay." He pushes the door open and walks in like he'd dropped a casual comment about the weather and not a test. He flicks the light on, but he isn't brave enough to turn around and see the expression on Dean's face.

"He's always wanted to settle down." Dean kicks off his shoes and keeps talking about Sam even though he knows that's not what Clint wants to hear. "Ever since I could remember he wanted to get out of hunting. He never really got back into it until the yellow eyed demon, and then we kind of got sucked into the whole Lilith and apocalypse thing. I wonder if he still wants to hunt now that it's all over."

"You did earn yourself a vacation if not an early retirement by saving the world." Clint flops down on his bed and looks up at Dean. "Any idea how you're going to spend it?"

Dean laughs as he runs a hand through his hair. "Hunters don't get vacations, and the only early retirement we get is death. I fight until I can't anymore. That's how this life works."

Clint's on the edge of his bed, and he reaches out and hooks his fingers through Dean's belt loops, pulling him forward until he's standing between Clint's legs. "But what do you want?"

Dean rests his hands on Clint's shoulders and pauses. No one's ever really asked him that before. It's always been go here, kill that, find your brother, keep Sam safe, move, move, move. What does Dean want? He wants the people he cares about to be safe and after that he wants them to be happy, but first and always he wants them to be safe.

He runs his hands through Clint's hair and tilts his head back so Dean's looking down into his eyes. He's wondering what answer Clint's looking for. Does he want Dean to move into this tower too? Hunters like to work alone; though, Dean's never really followed that rule. He hunted with John, he hunts with Sam, and more and more lately it's been Sam, Dean, and Bobby or Sam, Dean, and Cas. Besides, Dean's never been good at following the rules.

He's also not good at sitting still or commitment. Is that what Clint's looking for? Does he want Dean to move in and become all domestic? Share a closet and put their toothbrushes side by side, and eat eggs in the morning before putting on their suits? Does he want Dean to give up hunting? Could Dean do that? He'd been willing to give up hunting once upon a time for Sam, but he's not sure he can make that kind of offer again.

He's seen what's in the world. He knows what stirs in the night, and he has to protect people from it. Even more so now. They've prevented one apocalypse, but he's sure Lucifer has back-up plans in play, and the angels don't seem too keen on helping the humans out which means it falls on Dean to protect the human race. It always falls on Dean.

His shoulders sag, and he suddenly feels exhausted.

"Hey," Clint says, capturing Dean's attention. "You still with me?"

Dean smiles. "Yeah. I'm here."

Clint's eyes scan Dean's face searching for the answers to his first question.

"What do you want?" Dean asks and what he means is what do you want from me, how do I answer this question, tell me what to do, because I don't want to screw this up.

"I asked you first," Clint says, teasing.

Dean doesn't like answering questions when he doesn't have any clues to how he's supposed to answer. He bends down so his forehead presses against Clint's. "I want the people I care about to be safe." Dean's hands tugs on the short strands of Clint's hair. "And I want to keep protecting the world. There are spirits out there that need to be put to rest. There are demons that need to be destroyed. There are all these threats, and everyone is so unaware. I have to protect them."

"No one's asking you not to."

Dean pulls back so he can look at Clint again, really look into his eyes. "You're not?"

Clint loosely wraps his hands around Dean's wrists. "Of course not."

"Good." Dean nods and Clint's not sure which one of them he's trying to reassure. "Because I'm not very domestic. I'm not one for staying still. I can give you tonight, but I don't know what will happen in the morning. There might be demonic activity in Sacramento or a haunting in Nebraska. Or maybe things will be quiet, and I can stay. I-"

"It's fine," Clint says, running his hands up and down Dean's arms. "I know. I understand. I fell in love with you through the phone. We can keep doing what we've been doing. Except with less dying on your part and maybe a little more seeing each other in person."

Dean laughs. He can't help it. He's relieved that Clint's not asking for more than Dean can give, he's relieved that his life isn't about to be completely flipped upside down, and Clint's just said that he loves Dean, and Dean doesn't need anything more than that.

"I can deal with dying less."

"And seeing each other more?"

Dean shrugs. "Eh, maybe."

A slow smile spreads across Clint's lips and he reaches up to grab the collar of Dean's shirt. "I guess I'll just have to convince you it's worth it."

Clint presses his lips to Dean's, swallowing his response and pulling Dean down on top of him. Clint falls back on the bed, one hand on Dean's collar, the other fisted in his hair. He coaxes Dean's mouth open and sweeps his tongue through, lazily mapping the inside of Dean's mouth. Dean's promised him all night, which means there's no reason to rush things.

As Dean kisses back he shrugs out of his jacket and gets to work on the buttons of his shirt. He wants to feel his skin against Clint's. He wants their bodies to touch, to memorize every inch of Clint with his hands and then with his tongue. They belong together, both broken, but their jagged edges are what let them fit together.

Clint helps Dean push his button up off his shoulders, and Clint's hand pauses on the raised ridges of Castiel's scar. Dean breaks the kiss, his shoulders hunching together, but Clint doesn't break contact.

"He left his mark on you," Clint says, tracing the handprint.

Dean takes Clint's hand and places it on his bared chest. "You'll have plenty of opportunities to leave your own."

Clint grins and drags his nails down Dean's chest, raising faint red lines. He might as well start now.

* * *

The End.


End file.
